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Investigation of English History

Investigation of English History
A.T.Fomenko, G.V.Nosovskij
NEW HYPOTHETICAL CHRONOLOGY AND CONCEPT OF THE ENGLISH HISTORY.
BRITISH EMPIRE AS A DIRECT SUCCESSOR OF BYZANTINE-ROMAN EMPIRE.
(SHORT SCHEME) ABSTRACT This article is devoted to the investigation of traditional version of English chronology and English history. It should be mentioned that this tradition was established only in 15-17th cc.(and especially by Scaliger and Petavius) as a result of attempts to construct the global chronology of Europe and Asia at that time. The results of our investigation show that modern version of English history (which is in fact a slightly modernized version of 15-16th cc.), was artificially prolonged backward and became much more long as it was in reality. The real history of England, as it was reflected in written documents, was much more short. The same is true for other countries. In correct version, ancient and medieval English events are to be transferred to the epoch which begins from 9-10th cc. Moreover, many of these events prove to be the reflections of certain events from real Byzantine-Roman history of 9-15th cc. Consequently, the Great Britain Empire is a direct successor of medieval Byzantine Empire. This effect for English history corresponds to the similar “shortening effects” for traditional histories of other countries (Italy, Greece, Egypt, Russia etc.). Such effects were discovered earlier by the authors (see our previous publications). A discussion of the whole problem of global chronology and a history of this problem one can find in [1],[24]. English history is not an exemption from the “rule”. We do not think that all speculations which are suggested here are final ones. Surely, they are subject to further corrections and clarification. Nevertheless, the general concept is quite clear and seems to be a final one. The aim of present work is only to present main points of our new version of reconstruction of the real English history. CONTENTS 1.INTRODUCTION
2. BRIEF REVIEW OF TRADITIONAL ENGLISH HISTORY2.1.The most old English chronicles2.1.1.The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.2.1.2.Nennius’ “Historia Brittonum”2.1.3.Galfridus Monemutensis’ “Historia Brittonum”. “Histoires of the kings of Britain by Geoffrey of Monmouth”2.1.4.Some other old English chronicles2.2.What were the medieval names for modern cities, nations and countries according to ancient English chronicles?2.3.An overview of traditional concept of English history2.3.1.Scotland and England: two parallel “dynastic streams”2.3.2.English history. Epoch from 1st to 445 A.D. England as the Roman colony2.3.3.Epoch from 445 to 830. Six kingdoms and their union2.3.4.Epoch from 830 to 1040. The epoch is finished by Danish conquest and then by disintegration of Dutch kingdom in England2.3.5.Epoch from 1040 to 1066. Epoch of the Old Anglo-Saxon dynasty and it’s fall2.3.6.Epoch from 1066 to 1327. Norman dynasty and after it – Anjou dynasty. Two Edwards2.3.7.Epoch from 1327 to 1602.3.PARALLELS BETWEEN ENGLISH AND BYZANTINE-ROMAN HISTORY. GREAT BRITAIN EMPIRE AS THE DIRECT SUCCESSOR OF MEDIEVAL BYZANTINE-ROMAN EMPIRE3.1.Rough comparison of dynastic streams of England and Byzantine-Roman empire3.2.Dynasty parallelism between ancient and medieval England from one side and medieval Byzantine empire from another side. General concept of correspondence between English and Byzantine histories3.3.Some details of dynastic parallelism (“parallelism table”)3.3.1.English history of 640-830 A.D. and Byzantine history 378-553 A.D. 275-year shift3.3.2English history of 800-1040 and Byzantine history of 553-830. Rigid 275-year shift3.3.3. English history of 1040-1327 and Byzantine history of 1143-1453. Rigid 120-year shift4.CORRECT ENGLISH HISTORY IS MORE SHORT IN TIME BUT MUCH MORE DENSE IN EVENTS THAN IT IS SUGGESTED BY TEXTBOOKS4.1.Our new concept of English history4.2.In which way the Byzantine chronicles were inserted into the medieval English history (of the island Anglia)?5.OLD ENGLISH CHRONICLES AS ORIGINAL DOCUMENTS WHICH SPEAK ABOUT REAL EVENTS OF 10-13th CENTURIES
5.1.Roman consul Brutus – the first who conquered Britain (and the first king of britts)5.2.Consul Brutus of English chronicles – was he a contemporary of Julius Caesar?5.3.Biblical events in English chronicles5.4.Do we interpret ancient texts in a proper way? Problem of vowels restoration5.5.Geography and chronology of biblical events5.5.1.Problems with traditional geographical localizations5.5.2Where ancient Troy was located?5.5.3. Where Moses traveled in reality?5.6.Why English chronicles suggested that both Russia and England were located on islands?5.7.Where was the land Britain which was conquered by Brutus located? In what direction his fleet cruised?5.8.With whom Brutus fights while conquering of Britain = Albania?5.9.With whom Julius Caesar fights while conquering of Britain = Albania?5.10.Where was London located in 10-11th cc.A.D.?5.11.Who were scots in 10-12th cc.A.D. and were did they live? Where was Scotland located in 10-12th cc.A.D.?5.12.Five original languages of ancient Britain. Which nations used these languages and where did they live in 10-12th cc.A.D.?5.13.Where were located six original English kingdoms Britain, Kent, Sussex, Wessex, Essex and Mercia in 10-12th cc.A.D.?5.14.A shift of originally Byzantine map to the land of modern Great Britain resulted in duplicating of many geographical terms5.15.William I the Conqueror and Hastings battle in 1066 A.D. The fourth crusade in 1204 A.D.5.15.1.Two well-known wars in England and Byzantine empire have the same origin5.15.2English version of William the Conqueror story5.15.3. Byzantine version of the Constantinople’s conqueror5.15.4.A list of correspondences between events from Byzantine and English chronicles5.16.Medieval Russia from the point of view of English chronicles. When did apostle Paul write his message to galats and who they were?REFERENCES1. INTRODUCTION This work belongs to the scope of investigations carried out by authors in order to give a critical analysis of ancient and medieval chronology, and also – to try a reconstruction of real ancient chronology. The whole history of the problem one can find in A.T.Fomenko’s books [1],[24]. In these books some new statistical methods of obtaining true dates for ancient events recorded in old chronicles were suggested. As a result, a new chronology of Europe, Asia, Egypt and Northern Africa based on a statistical investigation of ancient texts, was suggested in [1],[24]. One also can find there a list of all publications by A.T.Fomenko and his colleagues devoted to chronological problems.
This new concept of global history and chronology confirms some ideas which were expressed by different scientists in 16-20th cc. The most important were ideas of famous Russian scientist N.A.Morozov (1854-1946) who had an extremely wide range of scientific interests in many different branches of natural science and history. Very interesting works devoted to the problems of traditional chronology were written by Isaac Newton, J.Gardouin, R.Baldauf, E.Johnson and others.As a result of application of statistical methods to historical science, A.T.Fomenko discovered a “fiber structure” of our modern “textbook in ancient and medieval history”. In such a way we will call a modern chronological tradition in history which is expressed in all our textbooks. It was proved that this “textbook” consist of four more short “textbooks” which speak about the same events, the same historical epochs. These short “textbooks” were then shifted one with respect to other on the time axis and then glued together preserving these shifts. The result is our modern “textbook” which shows the history much longer than it was in reality. To be more precise, we speak here only about a “written” history, i.e., such history which left it’s traces in written documents which finally, after their certain evolution, we possess today. Of course before it, there was a long “pre-written” history, but information about it is lost.Resume is as follows. History which we in principle could learn about today, starts only in 9-10th cc. “A.D.” (i.e., 1100-1200 years ago). And the very name “A.D.” attached to the era which we use now, is not correct. New results concerning the problem of reconstruction of real ancient chronology one can find in two last Fomenko’s books [4,5] devoted to history and chronology.An important step to the reconstruction of real ancient chronology was made by publication of a book [3] written by A.T.Fomenko, V.V.Kalashnikov and G.V.Nosovskij. In this book the true date of compilation of a famous ancient scientific manuscript, the Ptolemy’s “Almagest”, was (approximately) determined as a result of statistical analysis of numerical astronomical data in the “Almagest”. Traditionally it is assumed that the “Almagest” was compiled not later than in 2nd c. A.D. In [3] it is proved that the real date of it’s compilation belongs to the time interval from 7th century to 13th century A.D.Later, in 1992-1993, A.T.Fomenko and G.V. Nosovskij applied new statistical methods to Russian history. In Russian history there also were discovered chronological shifts and duplicates. It proves to be very much different from well-known version of Russian history which was suggested in epoch of Romanov dynasty reign in Russia. The book “Chronology and General Concept of Russian History” by A.T.Fomenko and G.V. Nosovskij is being printed (in Russian).In 1992-1993 authors recognized that the history of development of English chronology and English history itself is a very interesting and important point in the whole scope of global chronology reconstruction. In our analysis of Russian old documents it was necessary to use also some English documents. And immediately we came upon several such amazing facts that, it become quite clear to us that English history (which is rather “spoiled” in modern “textbook”) gives new and important information to the reconstruction of real chronology of Europe and Asia.We tried our best to make this work independent from our previous works. Nevertheless, such dependence exists. That is why we recommend to anyone who really wants to understand the whole problem of reconstruction the English history as it as in reality, to look through mentioned above books and scientific publications by authors. We believe
that this work is good for the beginning and it could serve as a starting point to the reader. We tried to avoid citation from other our works here (as far as it was possible).It is pleasure for us to thank Mrs. Laura Alexander (USA) for her excellent assistance in arranging materials concerning English history. Her energy very much inspired our work on English history.We thank T.N.Fomenko for several good ideas which improved some of our results concerning parallels between English and Byzantine history and also for valuable remarks which made this text better.2. BRIEF REVIEW OF TRADITIONAL CONCEPT OF ENGLISH HISTORY2.1. The most old English chronicles2.1.1. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.To understand a material we are going to present here, it would be better if a reader knows main things from English, Roman and Byzantine history. As to Roman and Byzantine history, we assume that it is more or less the case. But old English history is not so generally well-known. That is why we are going to present here a brief review of “English history textbook”.Surely, we could simply suggest that a reader looks through one of modern books concerned with English history before he reads this paper. But all such books are necessarily the secondary texts which, in fact, copy an information from more old texts and documents devoted to English history. The problem is that this coping proves to be not so good (part of information is lost). That is why we prefer to analyse medieval historical texts themselves rather then modern textbooks, which are based on them. An important advantage of these medieval texts is that they were written more close to the time of creation of now traditional global chronological version (it was I.Scaliger’s one). Our experience says that an information about old history was been lost while publishing new and new textbooks from that time up to now. Medieval texts are more valuable for reconstruction of real history.Our analysis was based mostly on three famous medieval English chronicles: Anglo-Saxon Chronicle [2], Nennius’ “Historia Brittonum” [8] and Galfridus Monemutensis’ “Historia Brittonum” [9]. In fact, these texts form a basis for modern concept of old and medieval English history.Also we used well-known “Chronological Tables” which were compiled by J.Blair [6] in 18th c. – beginning of 19th c. These fundamental tables cover all historical epochs which seemed important to experts in the end of 19th century.Now it is assumed that so-called “legendary” English history started from the time of Trojan war, i.e., in 12-13th cc. B.C. Nevertheless a 1000-year period from Trojan war to the epoch of Julius Caesar (1st c. B.C.) is considered usually as a “dark time”.From the time of creation and establishment of modern chronological concept (by I.Scaliger and D.Petavius in 16-17th cc.) it was assumed that “written” English history
starts from 60 B.C. when Julius Caesar conquered the British islands. But it is known today that documents speak about English history only from approximately 1 A.D., i.e. from the rein of Octavian Augustus. It was the 1 A.D. when Anglo-Saxon Chronicle began its records ([2], p.4).The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle consists of several separate manuscripts:Manuscript A: The Parker Chronicle (60 B.C. – A.D. 1070), Manuscript B: The Abigdon Chronicle I (A.D. 1 – A.D. 977), Manuscript C: The Abigdon Chronicle II (60 B.C. – A.D. 1066), Manuscript D: The Worcester Chronicle (A.D. 1 – A.D. 1079), (with twelfth-century addition 1080 – 1130 A.D.), Manuscript E: The Laud (Petersburg) Chronicle (A.D. 1 – A.D. 1153), Manuscript F: The Bilingual Canterbury Epitome (A.D. 1 – A.D. 1058).It is well-known that all these manuscripts duplicate each other in the sense that they all speak about the same events, but in more or less details. That is why all they are placed in the publication [2] parallel to each other in a very convenient manner, which makes it easy to compare different records concerning the same year. Maybe, all these manuscripts have the same written original and in fact represent different scripts of one old chronicle.Anglo-Saxon Chronicle covers an epoch from 1 A.D. to 11th century (except manuscript E which stops in 1153).It is traditionally assumed that all these manuscripts were written approximately in 11-12th cc., just in the form which we have today. But it is only a hypothesis which is strongly based on the Scaliger’s chronology. And it sounds not very natural. For example, manuscript A exists now only in two “copies” and both of them were made only in 16th c. (see [2], p.xxxiii). The original version (from which these two copies were made) was practically burned out in a fire. As to other manuscripts of Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, their history is not clear from [2]. For example, it is not pointed out what were the methods of determining of dates when existing copies were made. One could have an idea that the dating was as follows: if last records of these manuscripts refer to 11-12th cc., then the copies we now posses are necessarily written just in that form in 11-12th cc. Leaving aside other objections, we must say that this speculation in fully based on Scaliger’s chronology. If real dates of last mentioned events change, then such dating of a manuscript would also change.Difficulties with reconstruction of a true story for origin of these manuscripts are well-known among experts. For example David Knowles had to claim that: “The question of provenance and interdependence of the various versions [of the Chronicle] are so complicated that any discussion soon assumes the appearance of an essay in higher mathematics” ([2],p.xxxi).Moreover, G.N.Garmonsway says that any modern analysis of Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is based on the Charles Plummer’s revision (1892-1899) of it’s original edition published by John Earle in 1865. It should be mentioned that manuscripts A and E are again “associated” (G.N.Garmonsway’s expression) with certain persons from 16th century – Archbishop Parker (1504-1575) and Archbishop Laud (1573-1645). Here is his text: “Any account of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is necessary based on Charles Plummer’s revision of the edition of John Earle (1865) which was published in two volumes by the Oxford
University Press in 1892-9… Plummer’s edition… gives prominence on opposite pages to manuscripts A and E, associated respectively with the names of Archbishop Parker (1504-75) and Archbishop Laud (1573-1645);…The other manuscripts were once in the possession of Sir Robert Cotton (1571-1631), and are to be found in the Cottonian collection of manuscripts in the British Museum”([2],p.xxxi).It seems that all the manuscripts of Anglo-Saxon Chronicle which are available today were actually written (or revised) not earlier than in 15-16th centuries. However, they are considered to be written in this form in 11-12th cc. Probably the only reason for such point of view is that traditional dates of the last events from Anglo-Saxon Chronicle belong to this epoch: 11-12th cc. But such reason is not enough. It is possible that events from 11-12th cc. were described by somebody in 15-16th cc. and we actually possess his secondary text which could be very far from an original version. And also, the dates of events from Anglo-Saxon Chronicle strongly depend on a used chronological concept. If it changes then the dating of Anglo-Saxon Chronicle would change automatically.There is a strong argument which suggests that manuscripts of Anglo-Saxon Chronicle are actually of a rather late origin. The problem is that all these manuscripts use modern “A.D.” era which came into regular practical use only in 15th century. It is a known fact in traditional history. Later we will also present some facts which suggest that the authors of Anglo-Saxon Chronicle were already familiar with J.Scaliger’s chronological concept (16th c.), and by no means – with a chronological concept of Matthew Vlastar (16th c.). It means that Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was written much later then it is usually accepted.The reason for Anglo-Saxon Chronicle to be paid such great attention in our reconstruction of English history is very simple. It turns out that “Thanks to the example of Bede, the Chronicle is the first history written in English to use his mastery innovation of reckoning years as from the Incarnation of Our Lord – “Years of Grace” as they were called in England.”([2],p.xxiv).Concerning the way of presenting dates in Anglo-Saxon Chronicle we should make a remark. It is accepted that in medieval England they used for “A.D.” era the following formula: “Years from the Incarnation of Our Lord”. It is accepted today that this formula was equivalent to the formula “Years of Grace”. But this equivalence in not so evident and requires a special investigation. (We will return to this subject later and discuss it in more details). Note that there is a strange similarity between two well-known names-terms Grace – Greece.Maybe the original (and forgotten today) meaning of a formula “Years of Grace” differs from one which is accepted today. Maybe it was “years in Greece”, “Greek years” or something like this. It is possible also that there is a relation between terms Grace, Greece and Christ. Was the name of Christ associated in some sense with a name of country “Greece”? For example Christ religion = “Greece religion”? It might be because in medieval epoch Greece was a name of Byzantine empire, and another it’s name was Romea, Rome. So Christian, “Roman” religion could be called also as “Greek religion”; but if so then there might be a confusion between “A.D.”, “Christ” era and old “Greek”, Byzantine era which was used sometimes, as well as “A.D.”, with it’s thousands omitted. It could be not obvious which era was actually used in an old documents which indicate “Years of Grace”. Of course, such kind of similarity between different terms could not be considered as very strong arguments supporting any point of view. It play a role of preliminary speculations and should be considered as a serious argument only in the case when it appears (repeats) constantly in a long historical parallelism, when similar
names arise simultaneously for hundreds of years in two different epochs after one of them is shifted in time as a whole and then compared with another one.Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was written in a very laconic manner, it was divided into chapters (fragments) each of them devoted to a certain year. Many years are not described at all (there are some lacunas in the text). It is considered today that Anglo-Saxon Chronicle speaks about events from the beginning of A.D. to 11-12th centuries. See Fig.1. The text of Anglo-Saxon Chronicle seem to be really very old. Absence of long and “beautifully designed” periods in the text (typical for historical literature of 15-16th cc.) suggests that Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is an important historical document which was based on some really ancient records. Surely, it was edited in 16-17th cc. and a main question is: what credit should we give to chronologists of 15-17 centuries who actually dated events in Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as we have it now? 2.1.2. Nennius’ “Historia Brittonum”. Nennius’ “Historia Brittonum” is a rather short text, only about 24 pages in [8]. There exist more then 30 manuscripts of Nennius’ book which are known today (see [8]). “The earliest manuscripts are dated today by 9th or 10th centuries, and the latest – by 13th or even 14th centuries. In some of the manuscripts are indications that the author was Gildas. Nennius is called as the author sufficiently rare. Thus, this manuscript is possibly – compilation… The original text was lost, we do not have it today. But there exists its Irish translation of 11th century” ([8],p.269). Translation was made from the publication: “Nennius et l’Historia brittonum”, P.,1934. Some manuscripts are ended with pages from “Annals Cambriae”, which is considered to be compiled approximately in 954 A.D. Nennius’ “Historia Brittonum” does not have nor chronological subdivision neither any chronological notes except the following two ones: 1) A table titled “About six ages of the world” is placed at the beginning of the “Historia”. It presents time distances in years between some biblical events – and already according to Scaliger’s calculations, which were carried out only in 16th c. 2) Chapter XVI of the “Historia” has a section titled “The ground of the dating” , which speaks about the relative distances (in years) between a few events from English history. In both cases chronological notes are very brief. Resume is that it is unclear, who and when actually wrote the “Historia”. It’s original text does not exist today, a translation which is considered to be carried out in 11th c. The text does not have it’s own chronological scale. Surely, all questions which arise with Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, refer to “Historia” also. Moreover, Nennius’ text is written in a free artistic manner with many stylistic accessories. It suggests that this manuscript is of rather late origin. Such text could be written only in an atmosphere of a deep and well developed literary tradition when many people use writing and reading books and paper is not a treasure.
It is accepted today that Nennius describes certain events in a time interval from the epoch of Trojan war to 10-11th cc. A.D. In fact it is a result of only a traditional chronological concept (which suggests that short Nennius’ text covers an extremely large 2000-year historical period) that one could find today giant lacunas in chronology of “Historia”. Fig. 1 shows by a dotted line the epoch which is considered to be covered by “Historia”. According to traditional chronological concept Nennius easily omits whole centuries in his story, makes giant chronological jumps without any explanations. He seems not to notice it at all and continues his story after such jumps as if nothing was missed. 2.1.3. Galfridus Monemutensis’ “Historia Brittonum”. “Histories of the kings of Britain by Geoffrey of Monmouth”. It is generally accepted today that this chronicle was written in 30th or 40th of 12th century ([8], p.196) by Galfridus Monemutensis who based it on Nennius’ text, sometimes even copying Nennius “errors” ([8], p.231, comments to chap. 17; see also [8], p.244). Galfridus Monemutensis’ book is rather big one – about 130 pages in [8]. In opposition to Anglo-Saxon Chronicle his text has no chronological subdivision (no indication about years). His writing style was rather complicated, with many accessories, moralities, philosophical excursions et cetera. Galfridus is even considered to be not a historian only but also a poet. Surely, the traditional point of view that Galfridus wrote his book after Nennius, is correct. It is known also that Galfridus made an extensive use of “Ecclesiastic History of the English Nation” (in Latin) by Bede Venerable ([9], p.244). It is assumed that Bede’s “History” covers 597-731 A.D. It is remarkable that modern commentators point out “the extremely clear and evident Galfridus’ orientation of the antique tradition” ([9], p.207). For example, Galfridus not only used ancient plots, but also copied a stylistic manner of ancient authors ([9], p.207). It seems that Galfridus writes his book being fully influenced by the atmosphere of antiquity. It was pointed out that Galfridus copies some of his topics directly from ancient authors (for example, from Stacius), but does not give any references ([9], p.236). Galfridus Monemutensis’ “Historia Brittonum” was extremely popular in medieval times. “Today we have about two hundreds (! – Auth.) copies of his “History”,… which were written in different places starting from 12th century and until 15th century, i.e., up to appearance of the first printed edition” ([9],p.228). At first time “Historia” was printed in Paris in 1508. Fig. 1 shows a historical epoch which is assumed to be covered by Galfridus’ text (according to traditional chronology). Notice that it is approximately the same time interval as for Nennius’ case: namely, from Trojan war up to 8th century A.D. Of course, Galfridus’ book is much bigger then Nennius’ one, but being referred again to the giant 2000-year time interval, it could not cover it all without huge lacunas. And really, traditional chronology states that Galfridus “omit” large historical epochs. But it is strange, that Galfridus himself does not mind it at all. He calmly continues his story without notifying a reader that he sometimes actually misses whole historical epochs in his chronology. 2.1.4. Some other old English chronicles In our work we use also some other English chronicles of 9-13th centuries, particularly those represented in a book by V.I.Matuzova “English medieval documents” [10]. Here
we would like to present a very interesting list which was compiled by V.I.Matuzova as a result of her investigation of these chronicles rather then to characterize them in details. We will discuss this subject in the next section. 2.2. What were the medieval names for modern cities, nations and countries according to ancient English chronicles? Many people use to think that medieval chronicles refer to such well-known areas (regions) as England, London, Russia, Kiev etc. with just the same names as today, and so in general there is no problem to recognize what place old documents are speaking about. Sometimes, in more new documents, it is actually the case. But in more old, original documents such situation seems to be rather an exception then a rule. Old chronicles very often use absolutely different geographical names and it is a nontrivial task to understand what regions (areas, towns et cetera) they are really speaking about. It is also a problem that old documents in general use many different names for each country, land, nation etc. Very often these names have nothing to do with those we use today. The names of ancient nations, countries and cities which are known today, were fixed only in 18-20th centuries. But before that time there were various opinions concerning what names to use. These opinions were often quite different from each other. It is a very interesting question to analyse the names which were used in medieval English documents for cities, nations and countries which are so well-known today with their modern names. It turns out after such analysis, that medieval authors seem to have quite different views on old and ancient history. That is why modern specialists in history usually claim that almost all medieval people were “extremely wrong” in history, that they had “fantastic concepts” about it, “confused and mixed historical epochs”, “did not distinguish antiquity and medieval epoch” and so on. In a following list some medieval “synonyms” of modern accepted names and terms are presented. Each entry of the list shows a modern term and is followed by it’s medieval synonyms. AZOV SEA=Meotedisc lakes, Meotedisc fen, Maeotidi lacus, Maeotidi paludes, palus Maeotis, paludes Maeotis, paludes Maeotidae, Paluz Meotidienes.ALANIA=Valana, Alania, Valana, Valvy, Polovtzy ?! – see below.ALBANIANS=Liubene, Albani.AMAZONS LAND=Maegda land, Maegda londe, Amazonia.ALBANIANS=Maegda land, Maegda londe, Amazonia.BULGARIANS=Wlgari, Bulgari, Bougreis.BUG RIVER=Armilla.VANDALS=Wandali, Sea-cost Slavs.HUNGARY =Hungaria, Hunia, Ungaria, Minor Ungaria.BYZANTINE EMPIRE=Graecia, Constantinopolis, VALACHIANS=Coralli, Blachi, Ilac, Blac, Turks ! (see below).VALACHIA =Balchia.VOLGA RIVER=Ethilia.
GALITZK-VOLYNSK RUSSIA=Galacia, Gallacia.GERMANY=Gothia, Mesia, Theutonia, Germania, Allemania, Jermaine.HIBERNIC OCEAN=The English Channel, Hibernicum occeanum.HIBERNIA=Ireland (!)GOTHIA=Germany, Island Gotland, Scandinavia, Tavrida (=old name of Crimea).GUNNS=Hunni, Huni, Hun.DACKS=Dani, Daneis.DENMARK=Denemearc, Dacia, Dania, Desemone.DUTCH=Daci, Dani, Norddene, Denen.DARDANELLES (the strait)=St. Georg strait = branchium Sancti Georgii.DERBENT (passage)=Alexander gates = Alexandres herga, Porta ferrea Alexandri, claustra Alexandri.DNEPR RIVER=Aper.DOGI=Russians (see below).DON RIVER=Danai, Thanais, Tanais.MEDIEVAL RUSSIA=Susie,Russie,Russie,Rusia,Russia,Ruthenia,Rutenia,Ruthia,Ruthena,Ruscia,Russcia, Russya,Rosie.DANUBE RIVER=Danubius,Hister,Danuvius,Damaius,Deinphirus,Danube.IRON GATES=see “Derbent”.IRELAND=Hybernia.ICELAND=Ysolandia.CAUCASUS=beorg Taurus,Caucasus.CASPIAN SEA =Caspia garsecge,mare Caspium.CASSARIA=Chasaria (! (see below)KIEV=Chyo (!), Cleva (!), Riona (!),CHINESE=Cathaii.CORALLS=Wlaches (see above), Turks (see above),RED SEA=mare Rubrum.ENGLISH CHANNEL=Hibernic ocean , Hibernicum occeanum.MARBURG=Merseburg.MESIA=Moesia, Germany (see above),MONGOLIANS=Moal, Tatars (see above), NARVA=Armilla.GERMANS=Germanici,Germani, Teutonici,Theutonici,Allemanni.NETHERLANDS=Frisia, Arise.NORMANS=Nordmenn.OCEAN=Garsecg, Oceano, Oceanus, Occeanus,Ocean.PECHENEGS (medieval neighbours of Russians)=Getae.
POLOVTZY (medieval neighbours of Russians)=Planeti, Captac, Cumani, Comanii,Alani, Values, Valani.(See Comment 1.)PRUSSIA=Prutenia (!).(P-Rutenia = P-Russia).PRUSSES=Prateni, Pruteni, Pructeni, Prusceni, Praceni, Pruceni.RIONA=Kiev (see aboveRUGS=Russians, , Sea-cost, Slavs (see below)RUSSIANS=Russii, Dogi (!), Rugi (!), Rutheni (!), Rusceni.RUTHENS=Russians (see above)THE ARCTIC OCEAN=Sciffia garsecg, Occeanus Septentrionalis, mare Scythicum.SITHIA=Scithia (see above)SCANDINAVIANS=Gothi.SCYTHS=Scithes, Scythae, Cit (!).SCITHIA=Sithia, Barbaria, Scithia, Scythia, Sice (!).SEA-SIDE SCLAVI=Winedas, Wandali, Roge. TAVR=Caucasus (see above)TAVRIDA (CRIMEA)=Gothia (!!!) TANAIS=Don (see above)TYRRHENIAN SEA=mare Tyrene.TATARS (MONGOLS)=Tartareori, gens Tartarins, Tartari, Tartariti, Tartarii, Tattari, Tatari, Tartarii, Thartarei.TURKS=Coralli,Thurki,Turci,Blachi, Ilac, Blac (!!!).URAL MOUNTAINS=Riffeng beorgum, Hyberborei montes, montes Riph(a)eis, Hyperborei montes.FRANCE=Gallia, Francia.FRISIA=The Netherlands (see above.)CHASARIA=Cassaria, Cessaria (!!!).CHASARS=Chazari.CHIO=Kiev (see above)SCOTLAND=Scotia, Gutlonde.BLACK SEA=Euxinus, Pontius, mare Ponticum, mare Majus.CHINGIS-CHAN=Cingis, Churchitan, Zingiton, Chircam, Cliyrcam, Gurgatan, Gurgatan, Cecarcarus, Ingischam, Tharsis (!), DAVID (!), PRESBYTER IOHANNES (!!).JAROSLAV THE WISE (Kiev Princeps Magnus)=Malesclodus, Malescoldus. Juriscloth (= Jurius- Georgius), Juliusclodius (= Julius-Clodius). Julius Claudius.One remark about Jaroslav the Wise. He was known in medieval England as “Malescoldus”. According to M.N.Alexeev [12] there were also some other names which were applied to Jaroslav the Wise in Western historical tradition: Juriscloht (from Jurius-Georgius),Juliusclodius (!), (the last form of Jaroslav’s name was used by Norman historian of 12th century – Gijom), Julius Claudius, (this form used by Orderic Vitali).Let us present a typical example of old English historical text: “He escaped to the
kingdom of Dogs, which we prefer to call RUSSIA. When the king of [this] land – MALESCLODUS – learned about him, he was given a great honor” ([13],[14]).Here is a Latin original text: “Aufugit ad regnum Dogorum, quod nos melius vocamus Russiam. Quem rex terrae Malescoldus nomine, ut cognovit quis esset, honeste retinuit” [13].Imagine please reading this old text without looking at the modern comments which suggest that Dogs Kingdom means the same as Russia. The text would look like this: “He escaped to the Kingdom of Dogs. When the king of that land learned about him, he was given a great honor.”Most probably such text would be understood as a story treating some medieval events in England or Scotland. The word “Dogs” seems to designate a population in some part of England or Scotland and the name “Malescoldus” very much looks like a name of medieval English or Scottish king. Such an interpretation looks rather natural. One knows from Scottish history, for example, that there were several kings with a name “Malcolm”, close to “Malescoldus”: Malcolm I (943-958), Malcolm II (1004-1034), Malcolm III (1057-1093) etc.But such interpretation of this text would definitely transform some of ancient Russian events into English ones, i.e., into ones which are thought to happen on the land of modern England. This example suggests that even a direct understanding, not to say about an interpretation, of an old historical text could be rather ambiguous.Differences between medieval English writer’s opinion and modern way of understanding and interpretation of medieval terms occur for texts written in 9-15th centuries (not so old texts, from the point of view of modern tradition). It means that there exist several possibilities to interpret medieval documents. The way of such interpretation which is in general use now, proves to be not unique. It is only one of possible ways, maybe not the best one. We are going to show here that this standard way is really not enough supported by original documents. The above vocabulary of synonyms (medieval terms-duplicates) is very useful for our analysis of English history.2.3. An overview of traditional concept of English history 2.3.1. Scotland and England: two parallel “dynastic streams” Fig. 1 shows a rough scheme of the English history as it is considered today. The beginning of English history is placed in the 1st century B.C. (Julius Caesar’s conquest of England). Starting at this moment and going up to 400 A.D., English chronicles talk in fact about Roman history. Sometimes they only mention that certain Roman emperor visit England. According to English chronicles there were no independent kings in England before 400 A.D.We will take J.Blair’s “Chronological tables” as a source of information about general structure of English chronology. These tables were compiled in the end of 18th c., but the new information which became available after that time, have not changed the whole picture of English history and so this information is not very important for us now.In 5th century A.D. the Roman power in England came to the end and in that time the first English kings appeared. It was a moment when English history divided into: a) history of England and
b) history of Scotland.In other words, two dynastic streams began in 5th c.:a) English stream and b) Scottish stream.These two dynastic streams develop in parallel up to 1603 when they transformed into a single dynastic stream of the Great Britain.In 404 A.D. the long dynasty of Scottish kings began with the king Fergus I. It ends in 1603 when a united kingdom of Great Britain appeared with it’s first king Jacob I (1603-1625). Scottish dynasty looks “very good organized”: it practically does not have simultaneous reigns of different kings, it does not have breaks and epochs of anarchy also. Being represented graphically on a time axis, this dynasty covers a 1200-year time interval from 404 to 1603 A.D. in a very nice, extremely “regular” manner: reigns of Scottish kings cover one by one without intersections all this time interval. It is a fine example of “carefully written history”. See dotted line in the Fig.1. The absence of simultaneous reigns suggests that Scotland was a “geographically homogeneous” kingdom: it never was divided into several independent parts.English history shows a strong contrast to Scottish one in it’s structure.2.3.2. English history. Epoch from 1st to 445 A.D. England as the Roman colony. Time period from 60 B.C. to the beginning of the era A.D. is considered today as an epoch of conquest of England by Roman army under the command of Julius Caesar.Period from 1st century A.D. to 445 A.D. is considered to be an epoch of Roman occupation of England. England was a Roman colony at that epoch, and there were no English kings, because England was ruled formally by Roman emperors themselves. The description of this period in Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is in fact a compilation from Roman history of 1st – 5th (middle) centuries A.D. as it appears in Scaliger’s version of chronology.It was 409 A.D. when, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Romans were defeated by Goths, leave England and their power was never restored after that date: “In this year the city of Romans was taken by assault by the Goths, eleven hundred and ten years after it was built. Afterwards, beyond that, the kings of the Romans ruled no longer in Britain; in all they had reigned there four hundred and seventy years since Julius Caesar first came to the country” ([2],p.11).2.3.3. Epoch from 445 to 830. Six kingdoms and their union.From 445 A.D. we see six kingdoms on the English land. Each of these kingdoms has it’s own dynastic stream of rulers. Namely they areBrittany = Britain, Saxons = Kent, Sussex = South Saxons,
Wessex = West Saxons, Essex = East Saxons, Mercia.These six kingdoms exist up to 828 A.D. when they all are destroyed in a war and instead of them one kingdom is established – the kingdom of England. It is the time of Egbert, who becomes the first king of united England. The time of about 830 A.D. could be called, following [6],[7], as the end of Six Kingdoms. “It was 829 A.D., the time of Wessex king Egbert, when all Anglo-Saxon kingdoms united into one feudal kingdom” [11, p. 172]. See Commentary 2 which speaks about the term “Saxon”.2.3.4. Epoch from 830 to 1040. This epoch is finished by Danish conquest and then by disintegration of Dutch kingdom in England. Beginning from 830 A.D. English chronicles speak about only one dynastic stream of kings (in united kingdom of England).In the period 1016-1040 A.D. there was a crucial point in English history. In 1016 Danish king Cnut Danish the Great occupied England. He become the king of England, Denmark and Norway simultaneously. But his state proved to be not stable and after his death in 1035 it was divided. A representative of old English dynasty Edward “The Confessor” (1042-1066) became a king in England after that division. The year 1040 is represented in the Fig.1 as one of the most important break points in English history.2.3.5. Epoch from 1040 to 1066. Epoch of the Old Anglo-Saxon dynasty and it’s fallThe reign of Edward “The Confessor” finished in 1066 A.D., which is a well-known date in English history. In that year Edward died and after that England was occupied by Normans with their leader William I Conqueror the Bastard. In 1066 William the Conqueror defeated English-Saxon king Harold in Hastings battle and as a result became an English king himself. Period of his reign was 1066-1087. This well-known date (1066 A.D.) is also represented in the Fig.1.2.3.6. Epoch from 1066 to 1327. Norman dynasty and after it – Anjou dynasty. Two Edwards.This epoch starts with the beginning of Norman dynasty which ruled England up to 1153 or 1154 ([7], p. 327). Just after it the next, Anjou dynasty started in England. It existed from 1154 to 1272 ([7], p. 327).In 1263-1267 a civil war broke out in England ([11], p.260). After that, in the end of 13th c.- beginning of 14th c., the new monarchy was established in England. First kings in this new dynasty were Edward I (1272-1307) and Edward II (1307-1327). In the end of the considered time period there was a war between England from one side and Wells, Scotland and Ireland from another side. England tried to occupy these regions but it’s attempt was not successful. In 1314 Scots won.2.3.6. Epoch from 1327 to 1602.This period is started with the reign of Edward III (1327-1377) and is finished with the establishment of Great Britain as a union of England and Scotland.
The last period from 1600 to the present time is a well-known history, which we do not doubt and do not analyse here.Resume.We see that English history could be divided into several periods which are separated by well-known “break point” dates. We argue that these division is not occasional one. It reflects the existence of duplicates and chronological shifts in English history.3. PARALLELS BETWEEN ENGLISH AND BYZANTINE-ROMAN HISTORY. GREAT BRITAIN EMPIRE AS THE DIRECT SUCCESSOR OF MEDIEVAL BYZANTINE-ROMAN EMPIRE.3.1. Rough comparison of dynastic streams of England and Byzantine-Roman Empire.We saw that old English chronicles claim that England was a Roman colony for the first 400 years of it’s history. Moreover, when they speak about England at that times, they speak more about Rome and Byzantine empire then about England itself. That is why an idea of comparison of English and Roman-Byzantine dynastic streams seems quite natural. For this purpose we used the Global Chronological Map, which was already made by A.T.Fomenko including dynastic streams of Rome, Byzantine empire and England.Even first glance on this map shows a surprising statistical similarity of general structure for density of reigns in Roman-Byzantine empire and in English dynastic streams. Such specific “density picture” exists only for these two dynastic streams – Roman-Byzantine and English ones. Now we are going to describe this picture.Consider a partition of time interval from 1st to 1700 A.D. by decades. Let us calculate the number of kings in England whose reigns intersect with a certain decade. For example if some decade is covered by a reign of only one king then let us assign number 1 to this decade. If it is covered by two reigns then we assign number 2 to it, and so on. As a result of this procedure we obtain a graph which shows us how many kings ruled inside each decade. We call this graph as “density graph” for a given dynastic stream.Because of absence of kings in England before 400 A.D. the values of density graph in that time interval are zero. Approximately in 440 A.D. there were established 6 dynasties in England (six kingdoms, see above) which existed up to (approximately) 830 A.D. when English kingdoms were united. After that union there was only one English dynasty up to present time [2].Similar procedure was applied to the dynastic stream of Roman-Byzantine empire from 1st to 1500 A.D. Information about all Roman and Byzantine emperors of 1st-15th centuries was used. >From 1st c. to 4th c. all Roman emperors are supposed to stay in Italian Rome (and in it’s colonies), and after 330 A.D. another Roman dynasty in New Rome = Constantinople appeared. So, up to 6th c. there were two parallel Roman dynastic streams (sometimes they had intensive intersections). In 6th c. after a known Gothic war western Rome lost it’s status as emperor’s residence. From that time only one Roman dynasty stream in Constantinople = New Rome was existing constantly up to 1453. In 1453 after siege of Constantinople by Turks this stream was finished.
The result of our calculations is shown in the Fig.2. There are two curves in the Fig.2. At the bottom one can see a density graph for Roman-Byzantine empire, and on the top – for England. Note that English chronology is shifted down as the whole block by approximately 275-year shift.Both graphs look very similar. Both of them start with a period of low density and then, at the same moment the density increases very sharply. Periods of such high density have approximately the same length and the same amplitude in both cases. Then the sharp fall of density occurs simultaneously in these graphs. After that both of them are approximately constant. Their value changes mostly in a range of 1-2 reigns per decade for remaining several hundreds years.High density zone in English chronology is located approximately in 445-830 A.D., and for Roman-Byzantine empire this zone constitutes 170-550 A.D. The length is approximately 380 years in both cases. The duration of the historical periods in England and in Roman-Byzantine empire being compared constitutes about one and a half thousand years.We should say once more that such specific density graphs could not be find in other dynastic streams. It is a feature of English and Roman-Byzantine history only.Fig.3 compares density graphs for England and Roman-Byzantine empire in a very rough way: only high density zones are represented from the graphs. Fig.3 clearly shows that the chronological shift between English and Roman-Byzantine history is equal to approximately 275 years.Of course, above method of comparison for two different histories is very rough and could not be considered as a basis for any statements. But such similarity for density graphs is probably a reflection of the same origin of these two dynastic streams (on a long time period). It is also possible that one of them is a reflection of another one. Moreover, some well-known facts from old English history could support this possibility.For example, it is well-known that the old name of England and English people was not “England” but “Anglia”, “Angles” (from “Angel”), maybe “Angeln” ([2], p.12-13,289). Term “Angels” as a name of population appears in Anglo-Saxon Chronicle at a date 443 A.D. After that this term is used constantly. The first king which was called as “king of Anglia (England)” was Athelstan (925-940) ([7],p.340).Note that “Angels” was also a famous noble feudal family in Byzantine which includes Byzantine emperor dynasty of Angels (1185-1204) ([15], p.166).The natural question arises: may be the name “England” – “Angels” – “Anglia” is the reflection of the name of Byzantine dynasty Angels of 11-12th cc.?It was only some preliminary remarks. They could only to suggest that some connection between English and Byzantine ancient history seem to exist. More careful analysis says that these histories on a long time period are the same.Remark. When we speak about a “dynasty stream” we mean simply a sequence of kings in a certain kingdom which is ordered in time. We do not care about family relations
between these kings (which is usually included in term “dynasty”).3.2. Dynasty parallelism between ancient and medieval England from one side and medieval Byzantine Empire from another side. General concept of correspondence between English and Byzantine histories.We have discovered that there exists a strong parallelism between durations of reigns for English history of 640-1327 A.D. from one side and Byzantine history of 378-830 A.D. continued by Byzantine history of 1143-1453 A.D. from another side. This parallelism is represented in a visual form at the bottom of Fig.1.More precisely, we discovered that:1) Dynastic stream of English kings from 640 to 1040 A.D. (400-year period) is a duplicate (reflection) of Byzantine dynastic stream from 378 to 830 A.D. (452-year period). These two dynastic streams coincide after 210-year chronological shift.It means that there exists a subsequence (“dynastic stream”) of English kings whose reigns cover time interval 640-1040 and a subsequence of Byzantine emperors whose reigns cover time interval 378-830, such that they duplicate each other. Note that not all kings or emperors from these epochs are included in those dynastic streams. It is possible because often there were several corulers (i.e., kings or emperors which ruled simultaneously).2) The next period of English kingdom history: from 1040 to 1327 (287-year period) duplicates Byzantine dynasty history from 1143 to 1453 A.D. (310-year period). These two dynastic streams coincide after 120-year chronological shift.3) Dynastic stream of Byzantine emperors from 830 to 1143 also duplicates the same English dynastic history of 1040-1327. It is quite natural because Byzantine history has it’s own duplicates inside it. In particular, Byzantine history of 830-1143 duplicates Byzantine history of 1143-1453. For details see [1],[24].4) The ends of time intervals from English history duplicating Byzantine history coincide with the break points in English history which we pointed out earlier.5) The ends of time intervals from Byzantine history duplicating English history also prove to be certain natural break points in Byzantine history. They generate a partition of the whole Byzantine history into 4 parts which we will denote by Byzantine empire-0, Byzantine empire-1, Byzantine empire-2 and Byzantine empire-3.3.3. Some details of dynastic parallelism (“parallelism table”)3.3.1. English history of 640-830 A.D. and Byzantine history of 378-553 A.D. 275-year shift.We used J.Blair’s Tables [2] as the first main source of chronological information and Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as the second one. Below we use an abbreviation ASC for Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Note that sometimes different chronological tables contain a slightly different data, but these differences do not influence the parallelism which we are going
to present here.English historyByzantine historyEnglish history of 640-830. Wessex kings – one of the six kingdoms in England of 400-830. This dynastic stream is a part of the dense sequence of kings whose reigns cover the time axis with high multiplicity. See Figs.2,3.Byzantine history of 378-553. Byzantine emperors dynasty starting from the foundation of New Rome = Constantinople. This dynastic stream is a part of the dense sequence of kings whose reigns cover the time axis with high multiplicity. This period of Byzantine history is denoted as Byzantine-0 on Fig.1. See Figs.2,3.Commentary. Durations of reigns are shown in brackets (rounded off to whole years). In the left column the whole list of English kings is presented. In the right column almost all Byzantine emperors appear. Only absent are names of some emperors with very short reign and co-emperors of those ones who are presented here. Note that all English kings (with only few exceptions of very short reigns) are included in this parallelism.1. Cenwalch 643-672 king of Wessex and 643-647 as the king of Sussex. He ruled 29 or 25 years, if we consider only his rule in Wessex (after 647 A.D.)1. Theodosius I The Great 378 or 379 – 395 (16)Queen Seaxburh 672-674 (2), wife of K.Cenwel. Short rule?2. Cens 674-686 (12) according to Blair. In Anglo-Saxon Chronicle we see here two kings: Escwine + Centwine (9 years in total)2. Arcadius 395-408 (13) Caedwalla 686-688 (2). Short rule?3. Ine 686-727 (39) according to Blair and (37) according to Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (= ASC)3. Theodosius II 408-450 (42)4. Aethelheard 727-740 (13), and (14) according to ASC4. Leo I 457-474 (17)5. Cuthread 740-754 (14) accor- ding to Blair and (17) in ASCSigeberht 754 (1). Short rule5. Zeno 474-491 (17) (he ruled two times)?
6. Cynewulf 754-784 (30) accor- ding to Blair and (31) in ASC]6. Anastasius 491-518 (27) 7. Beorhtric 784-800 (16)7. Justin I 518-527 (9)8. Egbert 800-838 (38). In 828 A.D.(i.e., at the 28th year of his rule) he consolidated all six kingdoms into one – Anglia. The last 10 years he ruled as the king of Anglia. He is consi- dered as distinguished king in English history 8. Justinian I The Great. In 553 A.D.(i.e. at the 26th year of his rule) he defeated the Goths (this is well-known Gothic war) and became unique emperor in Roman-Byzantine empire. He ruled during his last 12 years without any corulers. Well-known emperor in Byzantine history3.3.2. English history of 830-1040 and yzantine history of 553-830. Rigid 275-year shift.English epoch of 830-1040. Anglia after consolidation into one kingdom (see Blair [6]).Byzantine epoch of 553-830. Is denoted as “Byzantine empire-1″ in the Fig.1.9. Aethelberht 860-866 (6)9. Justin II 565-578 (13)10. Aethelbald 857-860 (3)10. Tiberius Constantinus 578-582 (4)11. Aethelwulf 838-857 (19)11. Maurice 582-602 (20)12. Aethelred 866-872 (6)12. Phocas 602-610 (8)Here the old English chroniclers transposed two kings, namely – the kings Aethelwulf (see No.11) and Aethelberht (see No.9) were placed in another order (their Byzantine originals are Justin II and Maurice). This confusion has a simple explanation: all four English kings of this period have very similar names beginning from “Aethel”.13. Alfred The Great 872-900 (28) according to Blair and 871-901 (30) according to Bemont and Monod ([7],p.340)13. Heraclius 610-641 (31)14. Edward the Elder 900-925 (25)14. Constans II Pogonatus 641-668 (26)15. Athelstan 925-941 (16). It is supposed today that he was the first who took the name king of Anglia ([7],p.340)15. Constantine IV 668-685 (17)
16. Confusion: the war with Northumbria. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle mentions about three main kings of this period: Edmund I 941-948 (7), Eadred 948-955 (7), Eadwig 955-959 (4). All these kings ruled relatively short period16. Well-known confusion in Byzantine history in the end of 7th century – beginning of 8th century. Here there are several emperors with a short rules: Leontius II 695-698 or 694-697, Tiberius III 697-704 or 698-705, Justinian II 705-711, Philippicus Bardanes 711-713, Anastasius II 713-715 or 716, Theodosius III 715 or 716-717Thus, both confusion epochs (English and Byzantine) are matched under the rigid chronological shift. We did not discuss here the details because of mess structure of the chronicles of this time period17. Edgar 959-975 (16)+ Edward “The Martyr” 975-978 (3), and totally (after summation) they give 19 years. Their names are similar and consequently their union is natural17. Leo III Isaurian or the Syrian 717-741 (24)18. Aethelred II “The Unready” 978-1013 (35)18. Constantine V Copronimus 741-775 (34)19. Cnut The Great Danish 1017-1036 (19). His death indicates the disintegration of Danish empire. Thus, this epoch is finished by the well- known event in the history of Anglia. Let us note that this fragment of English history is matched with Byzantine epoch under 210 (or 275)-year shift (approximately)19. Constantine VI Porphyrogenitus 780-797 (17). Let us note that now we are in the end of historical epoch which was marked out in [1] and [24] as Byzantine empire-1 (527-840). Thus, in this column of our table we came to some important turning-point in Byzantine historyThe old English chronicles placed in the end of this epoch (in history of Anglia) two “short” kings: Harold I Danish (1036-1039, ruled 3 years) and Harthacnut (1039-1041, ruled 2 years). We did not find the Byzantine duplicate-original for Harthacnut, but the original-duplicate for Harold I will be demonstrated below
We continue the motion along English history in the left column of the table. The parallel with Byzantine history will continue (in the right column). But this parallel becomes more clear and evident if we take the next epoch “Byzantine empire-3″ (1143-1453) instead of the epoch “Byzantine empire-2″ (Fig.1). As we explained before, these two epochs of Byzantine history are parallel, i.e. they are duplicates (of course, not identical). Consequently, we will list in the right column of the table the emperors from “Byzantine empire-3″ and also will indicate here their duplicates from “Byzantine empire-2″. And we will see that the parallelism between English and Byzantine history will continue until the fall of Constantinople in 1453.3.3.3. English history of 1040-1327 and Byzantine history of 1143-1453. Rigid 120-year shift.English epoch of 1040-1327Byzantine epoch of 1143-1453. Is marked as “Byzantine empire-3″ in the Fig.1. It is the original for “Byzantine empire-2″20. Edward “The Confessor” 1041-1066 (25)20. Manuel I Comnenus 1143-1180 (37)The death of Edward “The Confes-sor” indicates the beginning of Norman invasion. It is possible, that English chronicles mean here in reality “Roman invasion” because there is the parallel between some periods of Roman history and Norman history (see [1],[24])After the death of Manuel I the hard time for Byzantine empire began and the turning-point is the well-known crusade and the conquest of Constantinople in 1204. It is supposed today that Italian Rome organized the invasion in Byzantine empireThe commentary to the dynastic stream of English history. After the death of Edward “The Confessor” a new king Harold II “Godwinson” took the throne. He ruled only 1 year and was killed in 1066 in the battle near Hastings. From the other hand it is known ([7],p.343) that in reality he got a great political power in 1054 when Edward was alive. But the English chronicles placed just before the rule of Edward “The Confessor” one more “short” (i.e. with a short rule) Harold, namely Harold I “Harefoot” (1036-1039) who ruled only 3 years. It is possible that this Harold I is simply the reflection of Harold II
21. “Doubled Harold”, i.e. Harold I Danish (1036-1039) and then Harold II (1066 year). Harold II ruled only 9 months. It is clear that this “doubled Harold” is the reflection of Byzantine”doubled Isaac Angelus”, who ruled two times. His second rule was short: less than 1 year21. Isaac II Angelus 1185-1195, then he lost the power and appeared on Byzantine throne again in 1203 (second time). He ruled no more than 1 year and finally lost the power in 1204, after the conquest of Constanti- nople by crusaders. Thus, his second rule was no more than 1 yearNorman conquest of Anglia. The famous battle near Hastings in 1066The conquest of Byzantine empire by crusaders. Famous fourth crusade 1199-1204We will speak later and more detailed about the parallel between these events22. William I of Normandy (Bastard) The Conqueror 1066- -1087 (21). His rule starts the new Norman dynasty in Anglia22. Theodore I Lascaris 1204-1222 (18). In 1204 a new Nicaean empire starts on the territory of Byzantine empire. The reflection of Theodore in Byzantine empire-2 is Basil I the Macedonian 867-887 (19)23. William II “Rufus” 1087-1101 (14). Thus, here we have 14 years and in the right column we have 11 or 12 years. We see here some confusion in the chronicles because in the right column Isaac II Angelus ruled twice23. Possibly, there is some mess in the chronicles when they describe the Norman dynasty and Nicaean empire. The first conjecture: the original preimage for William II is lost. Second conjecture: this is again Isaac II Angelus. But in this case the chronicle took the whole his rule: 1185-1195 and then 1203- -1204, i.e. totally 11 or 12 years.24. Henry I 1101-1135 (34 or 35 years)24. John III Vatatzes 1222-1254 or 1256 (32). His reflection in Byzantine empire-2 is Leo VI “The Philosopher” 886-912 (26)25. Stephen of Blois 1135-1154 (19). King Stephen finishes the Norman dynasty in Anglia ([7],p. 357). The next king Henry II starts a new Anjou dynasty in Anglia25. Michael VIII 1259 or 1260 until 1282 or 1283 (23). His reflection in Byzantine empire-2 is Romanus I 919-945 (26). Michael VIII starts a new Palaeologus dynasty which lasts from 1261 until 1453
Thus the rigid chronological shift matches English Norman dynasty with Byzantine dynasty of Angelus and then matches the next Anjou dynasty with Byzantine dynasty of Palaeologus26. Henry II Plantagenet 1154-1189 (35). Note that both terms Plantagenet and Porphyrogenetus have the same meaning: “one who was born in a shirt”. This term has well- known meaning – see commentary below26. Andronicus II Palaeologus 1282 or 1283 – 1328 (46). If calculated from 1283 to 1320 – the moment when his co-ruler Andronicus III began to reign then duration of Andronicus II reign is 37 years. He was reflected as Constantine VII 910 or 912 – 959 (47),(49) in Byzantine empire-2.Commentary. Term (name) “Porphyrogenetus” = “Porphyro” + “Genitus” could be interpreted as “one, who was born in porphyr”. It says about birth in a “royal attributes”, maybe “royal clothes”, “royal shirt”. It suggests a rare case from medical practice when a baby is born “in a shirt”, i.e. still in placenta (placenta sounds similar to “planta” – part of “Plantagenet”). In old times such cases were considered as a sign of outstanding future for the baby (good or bad one). We see in English version (left column) a name Plantagenet, i.e. Planta + Genet. It means exactly “birth in a planta, in a cover” – the same as “birth in a shirt”27. Henry II established a known dynasty of Plantagenets (House of Plantagenet) in English history. This dynasty was finished in 1329 with Richard II. So, this dynasty covers time interval 1154-1399 ([27], p.346).27. Michael VIII. He was just before Andronicus II. He established a known dynasty of Palaeologus in the history of Byzantine. This dynasty covers time interval 1261-1453 (up to the siege of Constantinople) ([27], p.636).So, the chronological shift which we discovered puts together two dynasties: Palaeologus’ and Plantagenets. Dynasty of Palaeologus’ is finished in 1453 and reflecting them Plantagenets continue up to 1399. 28. Richard I Coeur de Lion 1189-1199 (10). Duration of his reign is 10 years which is close to 13 years – duration of reign of his analog (original) in Byzantine empire28. Andronicus III Palaeologus 1320-1328-1341. Formally his reign lasts 21 years (1320-1341), but his reign as unique emperor (without corulers) was only for 13 years (1328-1341). In 1328 finished the reign of his coruler – emperor Andronicus II.29.John Santer 1199-1216 (17)29. John VI Cantacuzenus 1341 or 1347 – 1355 (15)
30. Henry III 1216-1272 (56). Henry III was the last king in Anjou dynasty in England. Dynasty of Palaeologus in Byzantine empire (right column) is not finished at this point but it is near to the end30. John V Palaeologus 1341-1391 (50). His has a reflection in Byzantine empire-2: Basil II Bulgaroktonos (975 or 976 – 1025). Basil II Bulgaroktonos’ reign was for 49 or 50 years.31. Edward I 1272-1307 (35)31. Manuel II Palaeologus 1391-1425 (33 or 34).32. Edward II Caervarven 1307-1327 (20)32. John VIII Palaeologus 1424-1448 (23 or 24).End of parallelism.In 1453 Constantinople was seized by Turks and Byzantine Empire changed to Turkey.Fig.4 illustrates this parallelism. It is important that durations of reign fit each other so well in the case when the same chronological shift was applied to all reigns. All dynasty was shifted as a whole, it’s internal time was unchanged.Fig.5 shows the same parallelism in a different form which is designed for visual comparison of durations of reign in both dynasties. For quantitative comparison we used numerical characteristic of a distance between two arbitrary dynasties, which was introduced in [1],[24]. It appears that this “distance” drops into a range of values which are normal only for strongly dependent dynasties (details about this numerical characteristic one can find in [1],[24]). Recall that two dynasties are called as dependent ones if they both reflect the same real dynasty.Dependence of these two dynasties (we mean statistical dependence of reign durations) is the main result of this paper. It is in fact a formal result and we might finish on it. But many not formal questions follow after this result is claimed. Main of them is: what real events lay under both of these two dynasties? What was the real history?4. CORRECT ENGLISH HISTORY IS MORE SHORT IN TIME BUT MUCH MORE DENSE IN EVENTS THAN IT IS SUGGESTED BY TEXTBOOKS4.1. Our new concept of English historyThe answer follows definitely from the above parallelism and from the Fig.1. Naturally, the more new dynasty (one which was later in time) is to be supposed as original one. This is a Byzantine dynasty 1143-1453 A.D. It was denoted above as Byzantine empire-3. In [1],[24] it was discovered that Byzantine empire-3 is a source of information for it’s reflections Byzantine empire-0, Byzantine empire-1 and Byzantine empire-2. Roughly speaking the whole Byzantine history is constructed from several blocks – duplicates of the same epoch: 1143-1453 A.D. As we discovered, English history being stringed to the English kings dynasty is a duplicate of Byzantine history up to 1327 A.D. (in English chronology) = 1450 A.D. (in Byzantine chronology). Middle of 15th century was a time from which we have enough information, so Byzantine dynasty of that time was surely a real one. It suggests that Byzantine is an original in above parallelism, and England before 1327 A.D. – a reflection. It could be seen from the Fig.1 how English history before
1327 A.D. was constructed from several reflections of Byzantine Empire of 1143-1453 A.D.As a resume we present the follows hypothesis.1) According to English history of 1-400 A.D. England at that time was a Roman province. English history of that period speaks more about events in Rome itself then in England. It was proved in [1],[24] that Roman history of that time reflects real events from 9-13th cc. A.D.2) That chronicles which are supposed now to speak about English history of 400-830 A.D. appear to describe Rome and Byzantine empire-0. Therefore these chronicles reflect some real events of 9-15th cc. which took place in Byzantine empire.3) That chronicles which are supposed now to speak about English history of 830-1040 A.D. appear to describe Byzantine empire-1. These chronicles also reflect real history of 9-15th cc. in Byzantine empire.4) That chronicles which are supposed now to speak about English history of 1040-1327 A.D. appear to describe Byzantine empire-3 and therefore they reflect real history of 9-15th cc.in Byzantine empire. The name “Anglia” (England) came from the name of well-known Byzantine dynasty of Angels (1185-1204 A.D.)5) Thus, in this hypothesis we suggest that those ancient and medieval English chronicles which are now available and which are thought by historians to speak about some events from the epoch before the beginning of 14th century, are in fact devoted to certain periods of Byzantine history of 9-15th cc. Roughly speaking, ancient English chronicles are in fact Byzantine chronicles which were taken from Byzantine to England and then modified in a such way that they seem to speak about events in England.6) The time when written history of the island which is today called as England really begins is most probably the epoch of 9-10th centuries. Now we have only very few information about that early period of English history on the island. So the description of English history of 9-13 cc. is in fact rather fragmentary. But this information about real island events was then “covered” by chronicles brought from Byzantine empire. The resulting sum of two fibers: “island fiber” and “Byzantine fiber” we can see now as the English history of 9-13th cc.7) Starting from 14th century English history speaks about real events in England only. Roughly speaking, traditional version of English history becomes correct from 14th c.8) One might ask: “If you are right, how to explain the fact that in ancient English chronicles there are chronological details about, for example, how many years there were between the Flood and a certain event of English history? These chronological details often agree with Scaliger’s (modern) chronological concept.” The answer is follows.At first, note that chronological and astronomical data from ancient chronicles in many cases strongly contradict with modern historical version. See [1],[24].
In the second, even if we see that a direct chronological statement from ancient text agrees well with modern tradition, it says really nothing, because all ancient chronicles which we have today, were finally edited only in 15-17th cc. And it was exactly the time when modern chronological concept was worked out (in general). Such direct chronological statements are simply the traces of chronological computations of 15-17th cc. At that time historians “calculated” the dates of ancient events and then placed (for reader’s convenience) the results of their (medieval!) calculations inside ancient historical texts. The fact that chronological statements in different ancient texts often agree means that today we have mostly the results of work of only one medieval chronological school. It was the chronological school which work was supervised in 15-17th cc. by Roman-Catholic church.Often, astronomical calculations were used for chronological purposes. In this case there could be certain astrological motivations in medieval astronomical calculations for chronology. Medieval scientists, and historians among them, often trusted astrology and could use it in their considerations. Maybe medieval astrologers tried to solve problems like these: what was the planetary configuration at the moment of coronation of Justinian I (or when ancient lunar eclipses occurred etc.)? Results of such astronomical calculations of 15-16th cc. could be placed in ancient texts to make their chronology more clear. It was large work and it might be very useful if the calculations were correct. Unfortunately, medieval astronomers and historians made a lot of mistakes. These mistakes are discussed in [1],[24]. As a result of such mistakes, ancient chronicles got an incorrect chronological skeleton. This incorrect chronology was then supported by church authorities and by medieval scientific schools. It was the chronology which we have now in our textbooks. And today, our contemporaries – the historians and chronologists – take the ancient chronicles (from archives) and with pleasure discover in them the “astronomical and chronological information”. Then, basing on the modern theory, they date the described eclipses, horoscopes (i.e., the configuration of the planets along the zodiacal constellations). After this, historians discover (with great pleasure) that sometimes these records from “ancient chronicles” satisfy to the Scaliger’s chronology (and, consequently, are correct). Of course, sometimes there are some contradictions. And sometimes – very serious. The real explanation is as follows: the medieval methods for calculations were more rough that modern ones. Then in each such case the modern chronologists “correct” these “records of ancient chronicler”. As a result, they form the illusion of the correctness of traditional Scaliger’s version of ancient chronology. But what the modern historians really do when the results of modern astronomical calculations sharply disagree with Scaliger’s chronology? As we know today (see, for example, [1],[24]) the list of such contradictions is very long. This fact shows that Scaliger’s chronological version is wrong. But in all such cases the modern historians start to speak (with a great irritation and displeasure) about “ignorance of ancient observers and chroniclers”, about “impossibility to apply the modern scientific methods to the analysis an ancient texts” etc.The visual picture of our chronological conjecture you can see in the Fig.6.4.2. In which way the Byzantine chronicles were inserted into medieval English history (of the island Anglia)?The answer will be extremely simple if we will erase from our minds the picture which is imposed by traditional Scaliger’s chronology.Starting from 11th century, several crusades storm the Byzantine empire. Several feudal
crusaders’ states were founded on the territory of Byzantine empire in 11-14th cc. In these states many nations were mixed: local population, the crusaders from England, France, Germany, Italy etc. In these crusaders’ regions and in Byzantine empire the new culture was created, in particular, were written a historical chronicles. Among Byzantine inhabitants were a lot of people from Europe, in particular, from some island, which later will be called England.In 1453 A.D. Turks conquered Constantinople. Byzantine empire was ruined and the crowds of its inhabitants leaved the country. Many of them returned in the Europe, in their old homeland. In particular, – in the island Anglia. These descendants of crusaders took with them their Byzantine historical chronicle, because these texts describe their own real history in Byzantine empire (during many years – one or two hundreds years). Several decades passed. On the island Anglia starts the writing its history (i.e., the history of the people living on the island). In 16-17th centuries some qualified historians appear and start to create the general history of the whole land Anglia (“from the beginning”). They search for ancient documents. Suddenly they find several old trunks with “very old” documents. The documents are dusty, the paper is very fragile, and the old books fall to pieces. These chronicles were transported from Byzantine empire. But now (in 16-17th cc.) nobody knew this. Unfortunately, the prehistory of these trunks is forgotten. And, unfortunately, is forgotten that these chronicles describe the history of ANOTHER LAND. The English historians of 16-17th centuries carefully analyse these texts as the history “of island England” and put them into the basis of “old British-island history, which started many centuries ago”. In some strong sense they were right because really the authors of the chronicles were closely connected with island Anglia (but, let us repeat, described ANOTHER LAND – Byzantine empire).This process is quite natural and does not suggest any special falsification of the history. Such natural errors were inevitable at the first steps of creating of the general history.As a result, appeared such chronicles as Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the Nennius’ chronicle etc. After some time this wrong version of an old English history stand stockstill, becomes a “monument”. Further historians simply modify (only a little) the initial scheme of the history, add some new documents. And only today, using some statistical and other methods we start to discover some strange regularities inside the “history textbook” and start to realize that the real history was possibly sufficiently shorter and that today we need to remove from the “old English history” its “Byzantine part” and return this piece to its right place (in time and in the geographical sense)This procedure is very painful. We realize this because we discovered the same problem in the old Russian history, when we also found several chronological duplicates.General remark. It is possible, that this process of “insertion of an old Byzantine chronicles” in the beginning of a “local history” is presented for several different regions which were closely connected with Byzantine empire. In particular, it is true for Russia, for England, for Rome, for Greece.5. OLD ENGLISH CHRONICLES AS ORIGINAL DOCUMENTS WHICH SPEAK ABOUT REAL EVENTS OF 10-13th CENTURIES5.1. Roman consul Brutus – the first who conquered Britain (and the first king of Britts)
We have analyzed above the durations of rules and suggested the conjecture that old English history is “a chronological reflection” of one period of real Byzantine history. The following question immediately arises: what about old English chronicles – do they confirm this conjecture? – or there are some contradictions? Let us take these chronicles and let us read them once more by “fresh sight”, without a priori “school” hypothesis about “great antiquity” of these sources.Now we recall to the reader well-known facts from traditional history of England (Anglia in old texts). Let us take, for example “Historia Brittonum” of Nennius, “Historia Britonum” of Galfridus Monemutensis and Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.Galfridus calls Brutus as FIRST king of Britts ([9],p.5). In brief, the story of conquest of Britain is as follows. After the end of the Trojan War and after the fall of Troy, the Trojan hero Aeneas arrived on the ship in Italy. After two or three generation his great-grandson Brutus was born ([9],p.6-7). By the way, Nennius thinks that “time distance” between Aeneas and Brutus is sufficiently more ([8],p.173). He states that “the distance” between Trojan war and Brutus is about several hundreds years. However, this difference is not so important for us.Then Brutus leaved Italy and arrived it Greece, where becomes the leader of Trojans survived after war. Brutus collects the large fleet and then his army (on the fleet) leaves Greece. After some time they landed on some “island”, began the battle with local people, won the war and founded the new kingdom.This is Britain.Brutus is the first in the row of rulers in ancient Britain. Today they are considered as legendary heroes, because, according to traditional chronology, these events were “in a deep past” (before Jesus Christ).Nennius tells the analogous story of Brutus (but more short). Nennius definitely states that Brutus “arrived on the island, which was called by HIS NAME, i.e., on the island Britain, then populated the island by his posterity and lived there. From this day and before now the Britain is populated” ([8],p.173). Thus, the Britain was called by the name of Brutus.Then Nennius informs us about opinion of some other authors, that “island Britain was called by the name of Britt, son of Isicion, who was the son of Alan” ([8],p.172). But according to the most widespread and authoritative version (which is quoted by Nennius) Britain was called “by the name of Brutus, who was ROMAN CONSUL (! – Auth.)” ([8],p.172). Thus, Brutus – the first king of Britain was Roman consul.This statement is extremely strange and impossible from the point of view traditional Scaliger’s chronology, because Rome was founded only about 753 B.C. and consequently in the epoch of this Brutus there are no “Roman consuls” and even no Rome! Anglo-Saxon Chronicle states that: “The first inhabitants of this land were the Britons, who came from ARMENIA (!-Authors)…” ([2],p.3).It is quite clear that here the name Armenia points out on the Romania, i.e. on the Roman-Byzantine empire, which was called Romai-Romania. Thus, as we see, the English chronicle again connects Britain and Roman-Byzantine empire.
Of course, today this statement of old chronicle is declared by historians as erroneous. The modern commentary is as follows: “instead of erroneous name Armenia one should read Armorica = Brittany” ([2],p.3). However, the replacement of Armenia by Armorica does not help to traditional history: the name Armorica also can be connected with the name of Roman-Byzantine empire. Our conclusion does not change.Thus, old English chronicles state that Britain was at first conquered by Roman consul Brutus, who arrived there with a military fleet and founded the British kingdom. He became the first king of an island Britain.5.2. Consul Brutus of English chronicles – was he a contemporary of Julius Caesar?It seems that the answer is quite clear. We need only to understand – when lived this remarkable Roman consul (according to traditional chronology)? It is very simple. The qualified reader already prompts to us the right answer: it was 1st century B.C. In this century we see (in modern textbook in ancient history) the well-known Roman consul Brutus – the friend and brother-in-arms of Julius Caesar. Brutus took part in many campaigns of Julius Caesar. Then Brutus betrayed Caesar – his patron and protector. We remember from our “scholar childhood” the bitter words of Caesar: “And you, Brutus”, which Caesar said when Brutus struck him by the sword.As we also known, the traitorous murder of Caesar – one of the most important episode in “biography” of ancient Roman consul Brutus. It is remarkable, but the old English chronicles also speak about this episode but in a slightly different words. They state that Brutus (the first Britts’ king) killed his farther. This murder is considered by chronicles as accidental, unintentional. Allegedly, Brutus shot an arrow and accidentally killed “his farther” ([8],p.173). In our opinion, this is slightly distorted Roman story about murder of Julius Caesar by Brutus. Here “farther” is Caesar – former friend and protector of Brutus.Because of this terrible murder, the people expel Brutus from his native land. It was done in both stories: in Roman and in English. Brutus started on a journey.Our simple and natural conjecture is as follows: in the old English story about conquest of Britain acts Brutus – the contemporary of Julius Caesar. As we saw, this conjecture is supported by ancient documents, although they do not call directly Brutus as friend or enemy of Caesar. Indeed, all chronicles state that AT FIRST Britain was conquered by Julius Caesar. Some interesting details are reported. Namely, Caesar arrived in Britain with Roman military fleet which consisted of about 80 ships ([2],p.5). But the conquest of the land became a complicated problem and soon Caesar returned in Britain with the fleet consisting of 600 (!) ships. After the battle the local army of natives were defeated and Romans founded the new kingdom. Moreover, Nennius claims that Julius Caesar WAS THE FIRST ROMAN who arrived on the island Britain and conquered the kingdom and Britts ([8],p.176).Thus, if Brutus WAS THE FIRST ROMAN arrived in Britain, and if Julius Caesar also WAS THE FIRST ROMAN arrived in Britain, then BRUTUS and JULIUS CAESAR are simply CONTEMPORARIES and brothers-in-arms. This conclusion evidently follows from old English chronicles.Let us resume these corollaries in the form of some table.
Brutus – the first king of BrittsJulius Caesar1. The first Roman arrived on the island, conquered the land and founded the kingdom1. The first Roman arrived on the island, conquered the country and also founded the kingdom2. Arrived in Britain with great military fleet2. Was the head of great military fleet which invaded into the land3. “Accidentally” killed his father by arrow3. His contemporary – Roman Brutus, Caesar’s friend, traitorously killed Caesar (= “his father-protector”)4. The murder of Brutus’ father by his son was predicted in advance by prophet (see Nennius, [8],p.173)4. Well-known story: the murder of Julius Caesar was predicted by Roman prophet (see, for example, Plutarch)5. Afterwards Brutus was expelled from his native land (as the men who committed the murder)5. Romans expelled Brutus as great traitor, because he killed Julius Caesar6. Roman consul Brutus starts the history of Britain6. Julius Caesar lived (according traditional chronology) in 1st c. B.C.Thus, from the position of common sense we immediately date the epoch of the first Brutus’ conquest of Britain (with his contemporary Julius Caesar) by 1st century A.D. Let us note, that this our statement is not new in reality. All experts know that Caesar conquered the Britain in 1st century A.D. All experts know that Brutus was the first who conquered Britain. We simply combine these two facts and formulate the evident conclusion:”Ancient” Roman consul Brutus – the “father” of all Britts, the first king of Britain, the “starting person” of the whole English history – is a contemporary on Julius Caesar, i.e., well-known in classical Roman history consul Brutus.The reader qualified in ancient history can, of course recall here also the second known Brutus in Roman history, who acted allegedly about 6th c.B.C. in Rome. He expelled the Roman kings from the capital and founded the Roman republic. But this historical epoch is in reality another chronological duplicate (copy), reflection of the epoch of Julius Caesar. It was discovered in [1],[24]. Consequently, the attempt to identify the Brutus = the first king of Britts – with “another Brutus” – fails. We again come to the epoch of Julius Caesar (1st century A.D. according to traditional chronology). Let us recall here, that according to chronological results, obtained in [1],[24], the epoch of Julius Caesar is in reality the duplicate (reflection) of the epoch of 10-11th cc.A.D.The reader can ask us: why we discuss in such details such evident question (the
identification of Brutus – the first king of Britts – with Brutus of Caesar’s epoch)?Our answer is as follows. This our statement is mortally dangerous to the traditional chronology of England (and not only England). This is the explanation why the traditional historians try to avoid any serious discussion about the assertion of English chronicles, that Brutus was Roman consul and that Britts are the descendants of Romans. In particular, the modern commentators of Nennius and Galfridus (A.S.Bobovich and M.A.Bobovich) irritatedly write: “The (medieval – Auth.) idea to deduce the origin of Britts from Romans and Trojans is not so original: already in 6th century A.D. the Frank’s rulers deduced their origin from Trojans (and, in our opinion, they were right, see the discussion about this subject in [1],[24] – Auth.)” ([9],p.270). And then commentators add carefully: “There are several Brutus in Roman history”. They do not continue and do not discuss this remark, and now we realize – why. If you start to analyse the “Brutus’ problem”, you (as we demonstrated above) will make the inevitable (and catastrophic for traditional chronology) conclusion that “English Brutus” was the contemporary of Julius Caesar.BUT WHY THIS CONCLUSION US SO DANGEROUS?At first, because in this case the so called “ancient legendary British history” is immediately moved upwards by approximately 1000-year shift in the epoch of 1-13th A.D. and moreover, in 10-15th cc.A.D.Such corollary, of course, is completely unacceptable (and totally fantastic) to any modern traditional historian. But there are some another, sufficiently more dangerous corollaries. About this – our next section5.3. Biblical events in English chroniclesThe “Historia Britonum” of Galfridus Monemutensis is strung on the pivot of biblical history. This means that sometimes, when speaking about the events of British history, Galfridus inserts the phrases similar to this: In Judea the prophet Samuel ruled at this time ([9],p.20). These rare phrases are scattered along the chronicle and form the rough (and very brief) skeleton of biblical history of prophets and biblical kings, which is closely interwoven with the stream of British history. But, by the way, Galfridus does not give any absolute dates. His chronology is completely relative, i.e., he tells only – in the time of which biblical kings (or prophets) were occurred some of British events. Thus, when analyzing the English chronology in a unprejudiced way, we meet the necessity to start the analysis of biblical chronology also. Let us do it and we will see what we will obtain.The evident identification of “English Brutus” with well-known Brutus from the epoch of Julius Caesar, is impossible for traditional historian because in this case the whole biblical chronology is automatically moved from its traditional place (in time) upwards by about at least 1000-year shift ! In reality this shift will be sufficiently more: about 1800 years! See [1],[24].Indeed, if “English Brutus” (the forefather of Britts) is placed in 1st century B.C., then, according to the “Historia Britonum” of Galfridus Monemutensis, ALL BASIC EVENTS OF BIBLICAL HISTORY should be distributed on time axis from 1st century A.D. until 13th century A.D. Here we mean: the history of all biblical prophets, the history of the kingdom of Judah and the kingdom of Israel et cetera. On the face of it, such conclusion is completely impossible! Traditionally, biblical history is dated from 11th century B.C.
until 1st century A.D.But if we will wait a little and will try nevertheless to place ancient biblical history on the interval from 1st century A.D. until 13th century A.D. – what we obtain?It turns out that this procedure does not lead to the contradiction with ancient evidences of ancient texts. We suggest to the reader to take the books of Fomenko [1],[24], where you can find the details. Here we demonstrate only one, but remarkable example.5.4. Do we interpret ancient texts in a proper way? Problem of vowels restoration.In the attempt to read and date the most of the ancient manuscripts (ancient Egyptian, ancient Slavonic, biblical et cetera) certain basic problems are frequently encountered.]As soon as J.Sunderland started investigating the original language of the Old Testament, he, in his words, “…faced the fact of enormous and even startling importance. The thing is that the Jewish written language originally had neither vowels nor signs replacing them. The books of the Old Testament were written only with consonants” ([16], p. 155).This is also typical for other languages. For example, an ancient Slavonic text was a chain of only consonants, too; sometimes even without signs replacing the vowels, or without division into words. Old Egyptian texts were also written in consonants only.According to well-known chronologist E.Bickerman, “…the names of Egyptian kings are given in contemporary literature schematically, in a quite arbitrary, so-called scholastic manner adopted in school textbooks. These forms are often greatly different from each other; it is impossible to order them somehow, due to their arbitrary reading (! – Authors.) which became traditional” ([17], p.176).Probably, the rarity and high cost of writing materials in ancient times made the scribes save them, and omit the vowels, thereby essentially shortening the text.J.Sunderland continues:”However, if we take the Jewish Bible or a manuscript today, we shall find in them the skeleton of vowels filled with dots and other signs denoting the missing vowels. These signs did not belong to the old Jewish Bible. The books were read by consonants, and the intervals were filled with vowels according to one’s skill and the apparent requirements of the context and oral legends” ([16], p. 155).Imagine how exact the meaning of a word written in consonants can be if, for example, CLN can mean clean, clan, colon, and so forth.According to T.Curtis, even for the priests, the content of manuscripts remained extremely doubtful and could be understood only by means of the authority of the legend ([16], p. 155).It is assumed that this serious short-coming of the Jewish Bible had been eliminated not earlier that the 7th or 8th century A.D., when the Massoretes revised the Bible and added
signs replacing the vowels; but they had no manuals, except their own reason, and a very imperfect legendary tradition ([16], p. 156-157).Well-known expert S.Driver adds that, since the times of the Massoretes in the 7th-8th century A.D., the Jews have taken to keeping their sacred books with extraordinary care, but then it was too late to repair the damage already done. The result of such attentiveness was just the immortalization of the distortions, which were then placed on exactly the same level of authority with the original text ([16], p.157).J.Sunderland: “The opinion reigning earlier was that the vowels had been introduced into the Jewish text by Ezra in the 5th century A.D. But in the 16th and 17th century, E.Levita and J.Capellus in France refuted this opinion and proved that th vowels had been introduced only by the Massoretes. The discovery created a sensation in the whole of Protestant Europe. Many people believed that the new theory would lead to disproving the religion completely. If the vowels were not a matter of Divine Revelation, but only a human invention, besides, a much later one, then how could we rely on the text of the Scripture? This discussion was one of the hottest in the history of the new biblical criticism and proceeded for more than a century, stopping only when the validity of the new point of view was acknowledged by everyone” ([16], p. 157-158).5.5. Geography and chronology of biblical events.5.5.1. Problems with traditional geographical localizations.Even if the vowels of common words are not that important (you can easily reconstruct a well-known word from the context), the situation changes completely when combination of consonants meaning a city, country, the name of a king, etc., appears in an ancient text. Tens and hundreds of different variants of vowels for one term (word) may be found, stating the “identifications” of the biblical vowel-free names of cities, countries, and others, made by traditional historians proceeding from the chronological (and geographical) version of J.Scaliger and the localization referring the biblical events to the Near East.As the archaeologist M.Burrows notes, the archaeological job generally leads to the undoubtedly strongest creed in the reliability of biblical information (cit.from [18], p. 16).F.Kenyon of the British Museum insists as much categorically on archaeology refuting the “destructive skepticism of the second half of the 19th century” [18].But here is unexpected information reported by the well-known archaeologist G.Wright, who, by the way, is a staunch partisan of the correctness of orthodox localization and of traditional dating biblical events. He wrote, “A great many findings do not prove or disprove anything; they fill the background and only serve as historical artifacts. Unfortunately, the desire “to prove” the Bible permeates many works available to the average reader. Historical evidences may be used in an incorrect manner, whereas the conclusions dawn are often erroneous and only half correct” ([18], p. 17).If we attentively examine the fundamental facts about the Bible discovered by N.A.Morozov [19], then we shall see that none of the books of the Old Testament contain any solid archaeological confirmation of their traditional geographical and time localization. As I.A.Kryvelev noted, the whole “Mesopotamian” biblical theory will be questioned.
The traditional localization of the events described in the New Testament is no better.I.A.Kryvelev many years studied the biblical geography and chronology. He wrote, “The reader interested in biblical archaeology may be bewildered by the hundreds of pages speaking of excavations, landscapes, or artifacts, historical and biblical background. And, in the conclusion, when it comes to the results of the whole job, there are only a number of indistinct and imprecise statements about the problem not having been completely solved, but that there is still hope for the future, and so forth. We may be absolutely sure that none of the stories of the New Testament contains any somewhat convincing archaeological confirmation (in terms of the traditional localizations – Authors). This is perfectly true, in particular, if applied to the figure and biography of Jesus Christ. Not a single spot traditionally regarded as the arena of a particular event occurring in the New Testament can be indicated with the slightest degree of confidence” ([18], p. 200-201).The natural question arises: where the events of Old and New Testaments were geographically located in reality?5.5.2. Where ancient Troy was located?In reality, considerable difficulties accompany the attempts of geographical localization of many of the ancient events and cities (not only from the Bible).For example, one of the accepted today traditional localizations of the famous city of Troy is near the Hellespont (= the sea of Helen). It is for this particular reason that Schliemann ascribed the famous name of Troy (described by Homer) to the rests of a small ancient village he excavated near the Hellespont. It is well known that today we have not any proofs of this “identification”.It is assumed today, that according to traditional chronology, Troy was completely destroyed in the 12-13th century B.C. and after this was never reconstructed [17]. But, it turns out, that in the Middle Ages, Italian city Troy, which still exists today [1],[24], enjoyed widespread fame. This is celebrated medieval city which played an important role in many medieval wars; especially, in the well-known war of the 13th century.Many Byzantine historians also speak of Homer’s Troy as of an existing medieval city, namely, Choniates Nicetas and Gregoras Nicephoras ([20], v. 6, p. 126).T.Livy indicates the spot named Troy and the Trojan region in Italy (Book.1). Certain medieval historians identified Troy with Jerusalem (see, for example, [21],p.88,235,162,207), which embarrasses the modern commentators: “The book of Homer somewhat suddenly turned (in the medieval chronicle, while describing Alexander’s expedition to Troy – Authors)… into the book on the destruction of Jerusalem” ([21], p. 162). Let us recall that the second (well-known) name of Troy is Ilion, whereas the second name of Jerusalem is Aelia Capitolina ([19], v. 7). It is absolutely clear that in the names of these cities there is a similarity: Aelia = Ilion.The books [1] and [2] contains the data and arguments which allow to assume that Homer’s Troy is the Constantinople (= New Rome), and that the Trojan War is the reflection of crusades which started from 11th c.A.D. The Constantinople was captured during crusades. Besides this, some part of the legend on Trojan War is the reflection of
a real medieval war from the middle of 13th c.A.D. in Italy. The Italian city Troy was involved in this war (see [1]).The identification of the Great Troy with Constantinople follows also from the texts of crusades epoch. The chronicler Rober de Clari told that the Great Troy was located near the entrance into the “branchium Sancti Georgii” ([25],p.210). It is supposed today that this is the Dardanelles. From the other hand it is also known that another famous chronicler of the 4th crusade – Villehardouin – calls as “branchium Sancti Georgii” not only the Dardanelles but also the Bosporus! M.A.Zaborov (modern historian) notes: “Villehardouin applies the name “branchium Sancti Georgii” to the Dardanelles and to the Bosporus” ([25],p.238).Thus, the Great Troy can located also near the entrance into the Bosporus. But here we see the Constantinople!Consequently, it was completely unnecessary to search the “rests” of the Troy on a desert hills as Schliemann done. Our conjecture: the Trojan War is the reflection of the one or several crusades on the Constantinople or on Italian Troy.The well-known medieval “Novel on the Troy” of Benoit de Sainte-Maure (“Roman de Troie”) was finished allegedly between 1155 and 1160 A.D. “The source of this novel is the “History of Troy destruction” written by some Dares, who was allegedly the eyewitness of Trojan War (possibly, he was one of the crusaders – Auth.). Benoit looks in the antiquity through the prism of his epoch and his reality… In his basis is the ancient Greek epos, but its personages and heroes are transformed into noble knights and beautiful ladies, and the Trojan War itself is transformed into the sequence of knight’s duels… Ancient Medea is represented in his chronicle as courtier lady, whose clothing is exactly the same as the clothing of the lady of her social level in medieval France of the middle of 12th century”([10],p.235).We suggest to read the old chronicles “in direct way”, without some special complex interpretations; we need to read “what is written” and not “what should be written”. In this case we are forced to agree that Benoit de Sainte-Maure describes the Trojan War as the event from medieval epoch.5.5.3. Where Moses traveled in reality?Let us return to the Bible. Many strange phenomena occur in an unprejudiced analysis of biblical geography (see detailed Morozov’s analysis in [19]).That many biblical texts describe volcanic activity has been stressed in history long ago. Let us take the Bible.The Lord said to Moses, “I am now coming to you in a thick cloud… But when the ram’s horn sounds (when the cloud leaves Mount Sinai – Authors), they may go up the mountain’… there were peals of thunder and flashes of lightning, a dense cloud on the mountain and a loud trumpet blast… Mount Sinai was all smoking because the Lord had come down upon it in fire; the smoke went up like the smoke of a kiln… and the sound of the trumpet grew ever louder” (Ex. 19:9, 13, 16, 18).And then: All the people saw how it thundered and the lightning flashed, when they heard
the trumpet sound and saw the mountain smoking…” (Ex.20:18).”You stood… at Horeb… THe mountain was ablaze with fire to the very skies: there was darkness, cloud, and thick mist. And the Lord spoke unto you out of the midst of the fire ” (Dt. 4:10-12).The destruction of biblical cities Sodom and Gomorrah has long been regarded in history to have been due to a volcanic eruption. For example:”And then the Lord rained down fire and brimstone from the skies on Sodom and Gomorrah… He saw thick smoke rising high from the earth like the smoke of a like-kiln” (Gn.19:24,28). And so on.The complete list of all apparent volcanic eruptions mentioned in the Bible was compiled by V.P.Fomenko and T.G.Fomenko (see [1],[24]).To associate (as is done traditionally) all these descriptions with Mn. Sinai = Mn. Horeb (and Jerusalem in traditional Palestine) seems doubtful; it is generally known that it has never been a volcano.Where did the events occur then?It suffices to study the geological map of the Mediterranean area to obtain immediately the unique answer. There are no acting volcanoes in the Sinai peninsula, Syria, or Palestine; there are only zones of tertiary and quaternary volcanism, as, for example, near Paris. In the above-mentioned regions, where the biblical events are traditionally located, no volcanic activity has been discovered in historical epoch since the birth of Christ. Besides, Egypt and North Africa have no volcanoes. The only powerful, and by the way, acting volcanic zone, is Italy together with Sicily.Thus, according to the Bible, we have to find1) a powerful volcano active in the historical era; 2) a destroyed capital (see the book of the Prophet Jeremiah) near the volcano; 3) two other cities destroyed by the volcano, namely, Sodom and Gomorrah.There exists such a volcano in the Mediterranean, and it is unique, namely the famous Vesuvius, one of the most powerful volcanoes in history.Famed Pompeii (biblical “capital”?) and two destroyed cities Stabiae (Sodom?) and Herculaneum (Gomorrah?) are located nearby. We cannot but mention a certain similarity in the names of these Italian and biblical towns. It is possible that the name of Sinai for Vesuvius originates from the Latin Sino (sinus), and biblical Horeb from the Latin horribilis (horrible).The following analytic study worth mentioning, which permits to read the vowel-free text of the Bible, was performed by Morozov in [19]. It took into account placing Mt.Sinai=Horeb=Sion in Italy.We illustrate by several examples.
The Bible speaks: “The Lord our God spoke to us at Horeb and said, “You have stayed on this mountain long enough; go now, make for all KNN (Canaan)…” (Dt.1:6-7).The theologians supply the Hebrew KNN with vowels Canaan and place it in the desert on the Dead Sea coast, but another solution is also possible, namely, KNN = GENUA (Italian Genoa).The Bible continues: “All KNN (Canaan) and the LBN (Lebanon)…” (Dt. 1:7). The theologians restore the Hebrew LBN with vowels as Lebanon; however lebanon means “white”, i.e., the same as Mont Blanc, or White Mountain. Famous mountain in Europe. “As far as the great river, the PRT” (Dt. 1:7). The theologians restore PRT with vowels and decipher is as Euphrates; but, there is the large tributary of the Danube, the Prut, located in central Europe, as beyond Mont Blanc. “Then we set out from Horeb… and marched through that vast and terrible wilderness” (Dt. 1:19).In fact, the famous Phlegraei, vast and burnt-out spaces filled with small volcanoes, fumaroles, and solidified lava streams are located near Vesuvius=Horeb. “And so we came to KDS-BRN” (Dt. 1:19).KDS-BRN is traditionally supplied with vowels as Kadesh-Barnea, which is, from the other hand, possibly, a town on the Rhone ([19], v. 2, p. 166). It is also possible that modern Geneva was meant as “town on the Rhone”. “And we spent many days marching round the hill-country of Seir” (Dt. 2:1).Mount Seir was left here without translation; however, if it is translated, we obtain Devil’s Mountain(s). And there is such a mountain near Lake Geneva, namely Le Diableret (“Devil’s Mountain”).Then, the “Children of Lot” (Dt. 2:9) met on the way can be evidently identified with the Latins ( = LT).”And cross the gorge of the Arnon” (Dt. 2:24). In the canonical translation we see Arnon (RNN). But,this is the Italian river Arno existing up to now!”Next we… advances… to Bashan” (Dt. 3:1). The town Bashan (Bassan) is often mentioned in the Bible. It is surprising that town Bassano still exists in Lombardy.”King of Bashan… came out against us at Edrei” (Dt.3:1). Adria is still here, on the Po delta; the Po, by the way, has often been mentioned by ancient Latin authors (e.g., Procopius) and called the Jordan (in Procopius’ Eridanus), which is very consistent with the biblical spelling of the Jordan, namely hay-yarden (JRDN) ([19], v. 2, p. 167).”And we captured all his cities… sixty cities…”(Dt. 3:3-4).Indeed, in the Middle Ages, there were many big cities in the region: Verona, Padua, Ferrara, Bologna, and others.”From the gorge of the Arnon to Mount Hermon (HRMN)” (Dt. 3:8).
But it is obvious that MNT HRMN can be supplied with vowels to be translated as the “German mountains”. “Only the Og king of Bashan remained… His sarcophagus of iron may still be seen in the… city of Rabbah” (Dt. 3:11).Here is mentioned not only Ravenna (=Rabbah), but also the famous tomb of Theodoric (493-526 A.D.) of the Ostrogoths (Og = Goths?). It is clear that biblical OG means possible GOTH.There follows TBRN (Taberiah in traditional biblical translation), which is naturally identified with the Tiber in Italy; ZN is Siena, southeast of Livorno. The slopes of Monte Viso are called Jebus (Jgs. 19:10-11) in the Bible, and Rome is called Ramah (Jgs. 19:14).And so on. As we see, the shift of some biblical events from “the deep antiquity” in the medieval epoch does not contradict with the ancient text of the Bible (without vowels). Thus, now we can continue our analysis of English history.5.6. Why English chronicles suggested that both Russia and England were located on islands? The fact that modern England is located on the island, does not surprise us. But Russia!? There are no geographical reasons to think that Russia is the island! But nevertheless, for example the well-known chronicler Benoit de Sainte-Maure in his “Chronicle of the dukes of Normandy” [22] speaks, thatThere exists an ISLAND called Cansie (or Canzie), and I think that this is Rosie (in another copy of the manuscript – Russie – Auth.), which is surrounded by the great salty sea. And they (the people of Russie – Auth.) fly out as great swarm of bees, and their number is thousands; and they… can attack the great kingdoms and take the great procurement and they can win and conquer.Here the original text: “Une isle i a par non Cancie (Canzie in manuscript B – see [10],p.240), e si crei bien que c’est Rosie (Russie in manuscript B, see [10],p.240), qui est de la grant mer salee de totes parz avironnee. Dunc autresi com les euetes de lor diverses maisonnetes gitent essains granz e pleners, ou moct a nombres e millers, ou com de ceus qui sunt irie’ sunt en estor glaive sachie’, tost e isnel d’ire esbrasez, trestot eissi e plus assez seuct icil poples fors eissir por les granz rennes envair e por faire les granz ocises, les granz gaaiz e les conquises.”Russia is called here Rosie or Russie. If we look in the table of medieval names, titles and their duplicates (see above), we will see that here the chronicler really speaks about Russia. V.I.Matuzova (who included this text in her book “English Medieval Texts”) comments this fragment as follows:”Rosie is Russia. The report that Russia is an ISLAND is similar to another such reports…”([10],p.244). And then Matuzova quotes another medieval authors who were confident that Russia is an ISLAND (in particular, some Arabian and Persian chroniclers; but, by the way, it is not so clear – where they lived in reality, may be in Spain?).It is supposed sometimes today that Cancie is Scandinavia. But Scandinavia also is not an island! By the way, the “Chronicle of Monastery of Saint Edmund” (13th c. A.D.) is
also convinced that Russia is located on an island, because reports that Tartars rushed on Hungary FROM ISLANDS ([30], and also [10],p.100-101).How we can explain it? The simplest way – to accuse the authors of 12th century that they were completely ignorant (this is the standard explanation in modern historical textbooks and this idea allows to the modern historians simply to “close the problem”).But another explanation is also possible. English word island means today the piece of land surrounded by a sea. But may be in the medieval epoch this word had also another meaning? Our conjecture: it was Asia-Land, i.e., the Land located in Asia. Without vowels we have: asialand = SLND, and island = SLND. This is the same word!Then all things immediately fit in their “correct places”. Russia really can be considered (from the Western point of view) as far Asian Land = island. Large part of Russia belongs to the Asia. Consequently, medieval chroniclers were quite right when we talked about Island Russia. They were not so ignorant as it is supposed today.Let us repeat once more our conjecture: the word island had two meanings in the past: piece of land surrounded by a sea, and Asia-Land.But in this case the natural question arises (as the flash). If the ancient English authors speaking about island Russia, assumed that they speak about Asia-Land Russia, then we do not see any obstacles to assume that when they told bout island Anglia, they also speak about Asia-Land Anglia. And only after this, in a new epoch, the word island Anglia become to be considered only as island Anglia in a modern sense (piece of land surrounded by sea).We saw the remarkable parallel between English history and Byzantine history. But Byzantine Empire really was Asia-Land for Western chroniclers. And only in the next epoch (when Byzantine chronicles were transported in England and were inserted into English history) the Asia-Land Anglia was transformed into Island Anglia.Thus, were was located the land Anglia-Britain in 10-12th cc. A.D.? This is a complicated question. To get the answer we have unique way – to take the old English chronicles. Our answer will be as follows:Anglia-Britain of 10-12th cc.A.D. was Byzantine Empire.5.7. Where was the land Britain which was conquered by Brutus located? In what direction his fleet cruised?On the face of it, the answer on this absurd question is completely evident: on the same place where England-Britain is located today. But let us not hurry.Let us recall after “accidental murder of his father”, Brutus was expelled from Italy. He went to the Greece ([9],p.7). Here Brutus fixed the ancient relationship and he was staying among Trojans ([9],p.7). The period of wars in Greece started at this time. These wars are described by Galfridus in many details. Then Brutus organized the army and fleet and after this started the campaign-cruise. It is supposed today that his fleet went in Atlantic ocean and then arrived in modern England. Is it true? Maybe the chronicles
describe in reality the military operations inside Mediterranean sea and on the territory of Greece and Byzantine Empire?For example, Brutus’ army arrived in Sparatin. Modern commentary: “Location is unknown” ([9],p.230). Of course, you cannot find Sparatin if you assume that Brutus travel far from Mediterranean sea. But if these events occurred in Greece, then you do not need to search Sparatin, because this is well-known Sparta.Then Galfridus describes the path of Brutus’ fleet which is considered today as a “proof” that Brutus really went in Atlantic and then arrived in modern England. But we see suddenly from modern comments that it turns out that Galfridus “repeat the mistake containing in his source – namely, in “Historia Brittonum” of Nennius, who made the mistake because of erroneous reading of Orosius’ chronicle…”([9],p.231). Moreover, then it turns out that “following to Nennius, Galfridus ERRONEOUSLY placed Tyrrhenian Sea BEHIND Gibraltar. We recall that Tyrrhenian Sea is BEFORE Gibraltar because is a part of Mediterranean Sea near Western coast of Italy” ([9],p.231).But we are sure that here – no mistake! Galfridus was right because he describes in reality some complicated military movements INSIDE Mediterranean Sea, in particular, near Italy, where you can see Tyrrhenian Sea. Brutus’ fleet did not pass in the Atlantic Ocean! Modern historians try to accuse Galfridus (and other chroniclers) in some “mistakes” only because historians try to adjust their modern “traditional” chronological and geographical concepts with real evidences of real medieval texts. Of course, a lot of contradictions appear. All these contradictions are considered today as “the fault of medieval authors”.Then Galfridus describes the battle between Brutus’ army and Greeks on the Akalon (Acalon) river ([9],p.8). The modern commentary is as follows: “This name is, possibly, the fantasy of Galfridus… E.Pharal is his book formulated the idea that this description of Greek’s defeat during the battle with Trojans near Acalon river, was taken by Galfridus from the story of Etien de Blua about the defeat of TURKS during the battle with CRUSADERS near “Moscolo” river at March 1098 A.D.” ([9],p.230).Consequently, here we can penetrate through the thick cover of traditional plaster into the real contents of the Galfridus chronicle. He describes in reality (following to some old documents) the epoch of the First Crusade in the end of 11th c.A.D. in Byzantine Empire.Thus, we can assume that Brutus’ campaign = Julius Caesar’s campaign is the reflection of well-known crusade in the end of 11th c.A.D. The conquest of Britain is shifted from the 1st c.B.C. into the 11th c.A.D. (about 1000-year shift !). This fact confirms the discovered parallel (“identification”) between Roman-Byzantine history of 10-15th cc.A.D. and old English history starting, allegedly, in 1st c.B.C. See above.After some time they (Brutus’ fleet) arrived to “the island which was called Albion” ([9],p.17). Modern commentary: Albion = Al’bania – one of the early (old) names of Britain or the part of it, which was appeared in ancient sources” ([9],p.232).When speaking about Britain, Galfridus very often uses its second equivalent name: Al’bania ([9],p.19).Thus, Britain = Al’bania.
Let us refuse now to follow the traditional historical version which identifies persistently the Anglia of 10-12th cc. A.D. with the modern island. Then we immediately recognize the modern name Albania (located on the territory of medieval Byzantine Empire) in this Galfridus’ term Al’bania.Thus, Galfridus places the medieval Britain on the territory of medieval Byzantine Empire.The name Albania or Al’bania was slightly transformed into Albion later (occasionally or, possible, deliberately), when somebody decided to erase the evident traces of Byzantine origin of the old English chronicles.5.8. With whom Brutus fights while conquering of Britain = Albania? After landing on the coast of Albania (later Albion), “Brutus named the island Britain using his own name, and named his fellows Britts” ([9],p.17). By the way, transformation of the Asia-Land Albania into island Albion (as a piece of land surrounded by sea) can be supported and partially explained because of the reason that Brutus arrived into Albania with his fleet, i.e., after sea expedition. And in some texts the landing on the coast of Byzantine Empire was transformed into the landing on the coast of some island.With whom meets Brutus after landing?With giants. We think that here chronicle means different great nations which lived in Byzantine Empire and possibly formed some individual dependent or independent states.]”Among these giants was one especially disgusting, abominable, who was called Goemagog” ([9],p.17-18). This “giant” was (according to Galfridus) extremely powerful and terrible. Brutus’ army meets in battle with 12 giants (among them – Goemagog). Initially, Britts were defeated. But then they “won and killed all the giants except of Goemagog” ([9],p.18). The battle with Goemagog continues and in the end Britts won.Let us stop for a moment and think a little. What tells us Galfridus in his poetic chronicle (of course, he was based on some old real documents).1) About the victory of Britts. In other words, as we think, – about the victory of crusaders who conquered Byzantine Empire.2) About one of the most dangerous their enemies – some Goemagog.The modern commentary:”Galfridus combined in one name two ones: Gog and Magog” ([9],p.232). The modern historian, the commentator of Galfridus chronicle, noted that the nations Gog and Magog are frequently mentioned in the Bible (in Revelation, in Ezekiel). For example, in the biblical book Ezekiel we can see the following text about these terrible and powerful nations:”Set thy face against Gog, the land of Magog, the chief prince of Rosh, Meshech and Tubal…Gog shall come against the land of Israel…” (Ezekiel, 38:2-3,18). According to the
Bible, death and destruction carry these nations.Remark. In some English publications of the Bible the word “Rosh” is omitted! Why?About the hordes of Gog and Magog with fear speaks the biblical book of Revelation: “Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, and shall go out to deceive the nations… Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle: the number of whom is as the sand of the sea” (Revelation, 20:7-8).The modern historian tells us: “Late the people fantasy transformed Gog and Magog into spiteful, malicious giants. In London starting from the Middle Ages there are two monuments – the figures of Gog and Magog (near entrance to the City, today near town hall” ([9],p.232).These two medieval nations are well-known and are identified according to some medieval chroniclers with Goths and Mongols. In 13th c.A.D. Hungarians considered Gog and Magog as Tartars ([9],p.174). All these facts forced us to move the events described by Galfridus into Byzantine Empire (or in neighboring countries).From the other hand it is impossible do not mention about the following important remark.The Moscow kingdom, according to the old Russian legend, which can be found in Russian textbooks until 19th century, “was founded by biblical patriarch Mosoh”. This legend explains why Moscow is called in Greek as Mosha (Moska). When the Moscow kingdom was founded? The reader gives the answer immediately: the first note in chronicles about Moscow is dated by 1147 A.D.Because the Bible speaks about Gog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal, N.A.Morozov formulated an interesting question:”Is it true that the Russian MUZHIK (man, fellow) = Rosh-Meshech was reflected in this famous biblical fragment, as the founder of Russia-Muzhikovii ? Then, after the filtration of the sound ZH through the Greek language, where this sound is transformed into S, this word was returned again into Russia as “Russia-Moscow”.’ ([19],vol.2,p.579).Morozov wrote: “Any kind of interpretation for these fragment from the Bible leads you to the historical epoch of Mongolian period in Russian history, i.e., to the epoch starting from 1227, when Mongol Batu (Batyi) becomes the ruler (king) of Moscow. When we agree with this point of view, then all things become very natural…” ([19],vol.2,p.615).We realize that for the reader who is not acquainted with the history of chronological problems and with the books of Morozov [19], Fomenko [1],[24] and Fomenko, Kalashnikov, Nosovskij [3], some of our ideas sound sometimes strange. Nevertheless, from the other hand, as can see the reader, all these ideas are produces by the formal logical analysis of the old English chronicles.Thus, if we return to the Galfridus chronicle, we are forced to formulate the corollary: during the landing on the coast of Byzantine Empire in 11th c.A.D. the Brutus’ army meets with several large nations, and among them are Goths, Mongols and Russians. It is quite natural for 11th c.A.D. because of an important role which play these nations at
this time in medieval Europe and Asia.5.9. With whom Julius Caesar fights while conquering of Britain = Albania?Let us remind that the Brutus’ epoch is simultaneously the Julius Caesar’s epoch. If so, the military operations of Brutus should be reflected in the texts speaking about the same operations but from the Caesar’s camp.Galfridus, when finishing the Brutus’ story, and passing several centuries along time-axis, comes finally to Caesar’s epoch. Then he started to repeat the same “Brutus’ story”, but, of course, from different point of view.Galfridus: “As it was mentioned in Roman history, Julius Caesar (after victory in Gallia) appeared on the coast of Rutheni. Looking from there on the island Britain, he asked his fellows, – what about this country and which nation lives here” ([9],p.37).It is quite clear to the trained reader that, according to the opinion of modern historians, Galfridus again demonstrates here his medieval ignorance. The modern commentary to this fragment of Galfridus’ text is as follows: “Rutheni are the Gall nation lived in Aquitaine (southern-western Gallia). It is impossible “to view” Britain from there, and consequently, Rutheni appeared in Galfridus text erroneously” ([9],p.238).Who are Rutheni? The reader can take again the dictionary of medieval names and their duplicates (see Matuzova [10]) and he will obtain the answer immediately:Rutheni are Russians.Really:ANCIENT RUSSIAN STATE: Susie, Russie, Ruissie,Rusia, Russia, RUTHENIA, RUTENEA, Ruthia, RUTHENA, Ruscia, Russcia, Russya, Rosie.RISSIANS: Russii, Dogi (!), Rugi (!), RUTHENI (!), Rusceni.It is well-known that Russian army several times took part in the military operations on Byzantine territory, in particular, they attacked the Constantinople. Thus, in the Middle Ages Russian forces really occupied some Byzantine regions. And it was quite possible “to view” the Albania = Britain = Byzantine Empire from there.Thus, our conjecture is as follows. Rutheni mentioned in old English chronicles during the Julius Caesar’s conquest of Albania = Britain – are the Russians of 10-12th cc.A.D.Later these Rutheni were shifted along the geographical map in Western direction, when the old English chronicles were taken from Byzantine Empire into modern island England. As a result of such artificial displacement (shift) the name Rutheni appeared on the map of Gallia (in France). Consequently, real Rutheni were “doubled, duplicated”. Then the initial, original location of real Rutheni was forgotten among the English chroniclers. Let us note the important idea.
When the Byzantine chronicles were transported from the East to the West (and were inserted in the history of modern island Britain), this shift also generated the “geographical shift” of many names and titles which were initially located in Byzantine Empire and around it. Rutheni (= Russians) are only one of these examples. We will demonstrate below some another examples.Let us return to Julius Caesar in Galfridus’ description. The fleet of Caesar invades into Albania = Britain. Here he starts the battle with Britts ([9],p.38), then defeats them and conquest the country. Let us stop for a moment and ask the question: who are Britts in 10-12th cc.A.D.? Traditional explanation is as follows: Britts are the descendants of Brutus. This “explanation” explains nothing. Basing on our experience, we can suspect that “Britts” of 10-12th cc.A.D. is some real nation of Middle Ages living in some part of Byzantine Empire. We do not need to search too long. The answer is on the surface.An important part of Roman-Byzantine Empire is Romania = Rumania, and also Bulgaria. Here you can see the well-known river Danube with large afflux Prut = PRT (without vowels) or = BRT. In the epoch of crusades the Byzantine Empire was the collection of several feudal states. One of the important nations, which were represented here (as crusaders), were Germans and Prussians. Let us put the question: which name was used by medieval English chroniclers for Prussians? The immediate answer is given by the same dictionary by Matuzova [10]:PRUSSIA: Prurenia (!), (P-Rutenia = P-Russia),PRUSSI (Prussians): Prateni, Pruteni, Pructeni, Prusceni, Praceni, Pruceni.Thus, the medieval sources call the Prussians as Pruteni = PRTN. It is possible that here we see the medieval BRT = Britts = Brits, described by Galfridus. Thus, it is possible that Julius Caesar was at war with medieval Prussians = Pruteni. In particular, Britain = BRTN (in 10-12th cc.A.D.) coincides with RRTN = Pruneti = Prussia ! Thus, one of the large regions in Byzantine Empire, namely, – occupied by Prussians = Pruteni, – gave the name for Britain = Prutenia.But another answer is also possible.According to the Abglo-Saxon Chronicle, the British language is the language Welsh ([2],p.3). But Welsh is evidently Vlachi = Blachi and, according to the Matuzova’s dictionary, denotes the Thurki = Turci = Turks. If so, in some cases the Britts can be identified with Turks (at least in some medieval chronicles). But this identification again leads us to the Byzantine Empire as the location of early English history.We hope that we gave the reasonable answer of the natural question:With whom Julius Caesar fights while conquering of Britain = Albania?5.10. Where was London located in 10-11th cc. A.D.? Trained reader waits with answer because suspects (and it is reasonable) that correct answer can be completely unexpected.
And we continue to read the old English chronicles which give us the correct answers on the all such questions. But we need to read “what is written” and not “what should be written”. The second formula is sometimes the point of view of modern historical Scaliger’s tradition which is in the basis of a modern textbook on ancient history.Galfridus:”When finishing with the division of the kingdom, Brutus decided to built a new town-capital… He founded the town and called it NEW TROY (! – Auth.). The town preserved this name during many years and then, because of distortion the initial title, the name was transformed into TRINOVANT. After this, Lud… who fighted with Julius Caesar,… ordered to call the town CAERLUD which means “Town of Lud” (the word Caer = Cair means simply “town”, see details below – Auth.). It was the cause of a great conflict between Lud and his brother Nennius, because Nennius was not agree with Lud who wanted to forget the initial name TROY” ([9],p.18).And then: “The title was distorted and was transformed into Caerludein, then into Lundene and finally, into Lundres” ([9],p.37).The modern commentary: “Trinovant is today the city London” ([9],p.232).Thus, the old English chronicles states that:New Troy = Trinovant = Lud = Lundene = London.Here we recall that according to the analysis in [1],[24], the NEW TROY of 10-11th cc.A.D. is New Rome = Constantinople. As we have mentioned above, the most known historical version states that “the Troy of Homer” is “somewhere near” the Constantinople = Istanbul. Schliemann wrongly spent a lot of his time for senseless “excavations of the Troy” (he discovered not the Troy). It was sufficient simply to point out on the Constantinople = future Istanbul.This idea is in a nice correspondence with all previous results which give the Byzantine location for initial old events of English history.Thus, Galfridus possibly tells us about the 1st crusade of 1099 A.D. As the result of crusade, the new capital was founded – NEW TROY = future Constantinople.Let us attract the attention of the reader to the following remarkable fact. There exists a well-known town TYRNOVO in Bulgaria. But this name is similar to the name TRINOVANT and means simply TROY NEW, i.e., TROY NEW = TyrNovo. It becomes clear that the name Trinovant was initially appeared in Byzantine Empire, on the Balkan Peninsula, in the Slavonic region and its initial meaning was NEW TROY. In English the word new means the same as Slavonic nova or new. Thus, one the initial names of LONDON was TROY NEW (its trace is Tyrnovo in Bulgaria). It is interesting that Galfridus states the same, when he tells us about transformation of the name NEW TROY into TRINOVANT. In reality, this is not a transformation, but simply the transposition of two words: Troy and New inside the joint title.It is clear also, that “town Lud” means simply “town LD” or “town LT”, i.e. = “town of Latins” = “Latin town”. The appearance of the name LT in old English chronicles is quite natural: in the epoch of crusades in 1204 A.D. the new LATIN EMPIRE was appeared on
the territory of Byzantine Empire. Latin Empire gave its name to the capital: LATIN TOWN, i.e. Caer-Lud (Cair-Lud). Nennius tells us that word “Cair” means in old Britts’ language “Town” ([8],p.190).Identification of New Troy = London with Constantinople follows also from the following fact. As we saw, New Troy was called later Cair-Lud or Caer-Lud. But Caer or CR (without vowels) sounds also, for example in Slav languages, as ZR because of often oscillation between C and Z. Thus, CR or ZR is evidently ZAR (czar = zar which means “king”, “ruler”). Slavonic name for Constantinople was ZAR-GRAD, which means “king-town”. Thus, CAER-LUD = ZAR-LUD, i.e. “king-town of Latins” (Latin king town). This is exactly Constantinople = ZAR-GRAD in Slav language.Trained reader expects that the whole this story of Galfridus (about origin of London’s name) the modern historical science claims as wrong and erroneous:The Galfridus’ information about the history and origin of the name London (from the name of Lud) is wrong. The antique authors (Tacitus, Ammian Marcellinus) call this town Londinium or Lundinium. The real history of the name of London is disputable” ([9],p.237).Thus, after the 1st crusade in 1099 A.D. some chronicles called the New Rome as NEW TROY. Then, after the foundation in 1204 A.D. the Latin Empire the capital was called also (or was renamed?) LATIN TOWN, i.e., Caer-Lud and finally, LONDON. This name was then transported into island England when some of Byzantine chronicles were moved in this direction (after the fall of Constantinople in 1204 A.D. or 1453 A.D.).Nennius listed in his chronicle “the names of all towns which exist in Britain, and their number is 28″ ([8],p.190). The modern commentary: “Cair means Town in Britts’ language” ([8],p.283). We can note here that the capital of Egypt is Cairo. Consequently, we see again, that in Britts’ language the clear “Eastern trace” was remained. May be, this fact indicates the Eastern origin of initial old English history.Galfridus tells us that New Troy ( = London) was founded on the Thames river ([9],p.18). We think that initially “Thames river” was one of the name for the Bosporus, where Constantinople is located. The Bosporus sound (strait) is really very long, sufficiently thin, and was represented on the old geographical maps as large river. Schliemann, by the way, decided to place “his Troy” also in this region, namely – in the end of another long and thin strait (sound) – the Dardanelles, which is close to the Bosporus.Today the name of the “London river” is Thames. But because all these events are happened in the East, we need to remember that here some people read the text in opposite direction: from the right to the left (in Europe: from the left to the right). The word SOUND (= strait) without vowels is SND and after opposite reading is DNS. Because D and T were sometimes equivalent, and the same is valid to M and N, we see that the following conjecture (equivalence) is possible: DNS = TMS, i.e. “sound” = “Thames”.From the other hand, Thames is practically identical with Themis. But Themis is the name of well-known GREEK goddess of justice.5.11. Who were scots in 10-12 cc.A.D. and were did they live? Where was Scotland located in 10-12 cc.A.D.?
Scotland = Scot + Land = the Land of Scots. Scots live in Scotland – this is well-known fact. But sufficiently less is known that in old English chronicles the Scots sometimes are called Scithi, i.e., Scyths ! See, for example the manuscript F of Anglo-Saxon Chronicle ([2],p.3, comment 4). Thus, one of possible answers on the question in the title of present section is as follows: Scots = Scyths. In other words, Scotland = the Land of Scyths = Scithi-Land. Scyths lived in Scythia, which is partially identified with some regions in modern Russia. Old English chronicles call Scythia also as Scithia, Sice, Sithia, Barbaria (see [10]). Are there some “traces” of medieval name Scots (for Scyths) in modern Russia? Yes! It is known that Scyths are considered partially as the nation which cultivated the cattle. But before now the Russian term for “cattle” is SCOT. Our conjecture: the Scots mentioned in old English chronicles of 10-12th cc.A.D. are Scyths = Scithi which lived near Byzantine Empire on the territory (partially) of modern Russia. It was in 10-12th cc.A.D. Then, after transport of Byzantine chronicles into modern island Britain, the name of Scyths was also automatically shifted in modern England. And today we see in the modern England the Scyth-Land as Scot-Land. And we see again that the old English chronicle tell us about the real Byzantine history, because really Scyths of 10-12th cc.A.D. lived near Byzantine Empire. Nennius, in the section with title “About Scots when they captured Hybernia”, informs us: “If somebody wants to know when… Hybernia was uninhabited, desert, then the most informed among SCOTS told me the following. When the people of Israel went from Egypt, the Egyptians who haunted Israelits (according to the Bible), were sank in the Sea. Among the Egyptians was one noble man from SCYTHIA (! – Auth.) with many relatives and with many servants. He was expelled (banished) from his native kingdom and we was in Egypt when Egyptian army was sank in the Sea… Then the survived Egyptians decided to expel him from the Egypt because they afraid that he can captures their country and to establish his power in Egypt” ([8],p.174). Then, as a result, these Scyths were expelled from Egypt, and then their fleet conquered the Hybernia. This event is considered (in Nennius’ opinion) as conquest of Hybernia by Scots ([8],p.175). Thus, here we see that Nennius was sure that Scots were descended from Scyths.
It is possible that here the name Hybernia was in reality applied to the Hyberia = old name of modern Georgia (or, may be to the medieval Spain). It is supposed today in historical science that medieval Hybernia = Ireland. As we expect (and this is really true), the modern historical commentary to this fragment from Nennius’ chronicle is very angry: “Which Scythia is mentioned here? Bede Venerable calls the Scandinavia as Scythia. The version about “Scyths” origin of Scots was appeared because of some similarity between words “Scithia” and “Scottia” “([8],p.272). The commentator here passed over in silence that sometimes “Scots” were written in old English chronicles as “Scithi”, i.e., “Scyths” and this fact is well-known to the real experts in the ancient English history. See [2]. By the way, the replacement of Scythia by Scandinavia does not help, because (as we have demonstrated above), the old English chronicles sometimes identified Cansie = Scandinavia and Russia (Rossie) (see [10]): “Cansie (or Canzie), and I think that this is Rosie (in another copy of the manuscript – Russie – Auth.)” (see the discussion above). If it was really true that in some medieval historical period the Scithia was called as Scotland (in some historical chronicles), then the great interest will obtain the following fact. As we saw, the English chronicles called Russian king (ruler) Jaroslav the Sage (Wise) as Malescold (Malescoldus) ([10],p.58). Thus, his whole title (if Scythia was Scotland) should be Scottish (or Scoth) king Malescold (or Malcolm?). But we know several medieval Scottish kings Malcolms in traditional Scotland history. May be one of them is Russian king Jaroslav the Sage who was “transported” into “island Scottish history” as a result of chronological and geographical shift? 5.12. Five original languages of ancient Britain. Which nations used these languages and where did they live in 10-12th cc.A.D.? On the first page of Anglo-Saxon Chronicle the following important information is presented: “Here in this island (i.e. in Britain – Auth.) are five languages: English, British or Welsh, Irish, Pictish, and Latin… Picts came from the south from Scythia with warships, not many, and landed at first in northern Ireland, and there asked the Scots if they mights dwell there… And the Picts asked the Scots for wives… A part of Scots went from Ireland into Britain” ([2],p.3). Is there any contradiction between these facts and our identification of old English events with events of crusades epoch of 10-12th cc. A.D. in Byzantine empire? No contradiction! Moreover, here we see certain confirmation of our
conjecture. 1) Appearance of the name Anglia (English) in the old English history is quite natural – this is the evident reflection of well-known dynasty of Byzantine emperors: Angels = Angelus (1185-1204). 2) The name Latin is the reflection of Latin Empire in Constantinople (13th c. A.D.), and a little earlier – the reflection of a group of Latins who came in Byzantine Empire during crusades epoch. Then they settled here and founded several feudal states. 3-a) The name British = BRT (and its duplicate=equivalent Welsh, see [2]) also is presented in the medieval Byzantine history. This is the name of Prussians=Pruteni = PRT (see above). 3-b) The English term Welsh is also well-known in medieval Byzantine empire. It is sufficient to look in the table of Matuzova [10] to get an immediate answer: Vlach (or Blachi) = Welsh – this is Turci = Thurki = Turks. Really: Turks = Coralli, Thurki, Turci, Vlachi = Blachi, Ilac, Blac (!). The name Vlachi=Blachi or Volochi is well-known in the medieval Europe. Starting from 9th c. A.D., they lived on the territory of modern Romania = Rumania ([11],p.352) and they formed the state Valachia. It is remarkable that the another, second name for Valachia was Zara Rumanska, i.e. the Kingdom of Romania (or Rumania). The most serious influence (on the fate of the whole region) Valachia had in 14th c.A.D. The history of Valachia is closely connected with the history of Turkey. The medieval Valachia several times was in a heavy war with Turkey (with Osman Empire). In the end of 14th century and in the beginning of 15th century the rulers of Valachia became the vassals of Turkey ([11],p.356). Consequently, the names of Valachia (Welsh) and Turkey are closely connected in the whole medieval history of Byzantine Empire. Moreover, the name Vlachi is well-known in the history of Constantinople. One of the main residences of Byzantine emperors was in Vlachern Palace ([25],p.226-229). This “Palace was the favorite residence of Comnenus” ([15],p.137). Greeks called it Vlacherni. “Valachia (in the form Blakie) – is geographical name which is often used by Robert de Clari (and also by Geoffrey de Villehardouin) for the territory of Eastern Balkan” ([15],p.135). This region was called by Byzantine authors as Great Vlachia. In other words, the Great Vlachia is the part of the modern Bulgaria.
Thus, the old English name Welsh points out on Balkan’s Valachia of 9-15 cc. A.D., or on the Turkey, or on the whole Byzantine Empire. 4) The original (preimage) of Pictish (Picts, Pict = PCT) in Byzantine Empire is quite clear. It is well-known that the ancient name of Egypt was Copt (= CPT) or Gipt. Thus, we obtain the immediate answer: Picts – are Copts or Gipts (i.e., Egyptians). By the way, Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is quite right when speaking that Picts came (in Britain – Auth.) from the country which is in the South with respect to Scithia. Really, Egypt is in the South with respect to the Scythia. 5) And finally, what about the language IRISH ? Anglo-Saxon Chronicle states that some part of Scotts came from Ireland ([2],p.3). Besides this, at least in some historical epochs we have:”Down to the time of Alfred this term Scottas refers either to the Scots of Ireland or of the Irish kingdom of Argyll” ([2],p.3, comm.5). But this means that Ireland is the part of Scot-Land. Because we have possible identification of Scots of 10-12th cc. with Scyths, then we obtain the following conjecture: language Irish is Russian (RSH = Russia), because without vowels we have RSH – RSS, “irish” and “russian” sound very closely. Consequently, in this historical epoch we have: Ireland = Ire + Land is the Russia. We realize that this possible identification of Ireland (in some historical epoch) with Russia (and consequently, identification of Scotland with Scythia), can generate a certain irritation and even indignation of some scientists. Nevertheless, we are forced to repeat once more that all these conclusions follow from the text of old English chronicles, when we read them without the restrictions generated by traditional Scaliger’s chronology. By the way, may be not all readers know that the legendary English (British) king Arthur (who is one of the most famous rulers of ancient England and is placed traditionally approximately in the 5th c.A.D.) was in direct contact with the king of Russia (“and the king of Russia, the most severe of the knights”). This is the report of Layamon (the beginning of 13th century) – the author of the poem “Brut, or the Chronicle of Britain” ([23], see also [10],pp.247-248). By the way, in the time of the king Arthur the princess (or queen) of Russia was kidnaped (see [23]). When speaking about nations populated the old England, Galfridus tells us ([9],p.6): Normans, Britts, Saxs, Picts, Scots.
We spoke about Britts, Picts and Scots. Now – about Normans. 6) Normans play an important role in Byzantine Empire of 10-15 cc. They took part in crusades. However, it is possible, that Normans are simply one more variant for the name Romans. If so, they are Romans – Romei, the people who lived in Roman (Byzantine) empire. 7) Now – about Saxs (Saxons). “Saxs (Saxons) – German nation lived in northern Europe, mostly on the territory near North Sea. In 5-6 centuries Britain was conquered by German tribes… Galfridus usually calls he GERMAN INVADERS by generalized name SAXS (SAXONS), but in some cases speaks about Angls (Angels)” ([9],pp.229-230). Let us compare with Byzantine history. It is well-known that Germans took part in crusades. Consequently, Saxons (Saxs) and Angls (Angels) were among the nations which invaded into Byzantine empire in 10-12 centuries. Thus, finally we see that the old English chronicles tell here not about some small nations which, as supposed today, lived many years ago on the modern island England, but about real great nations, states and empires. These great medieval nations were well-known in medieval Byzantine empire and Mediterranean region. If so, the old English chronicles describe important events in medieval world (crusades et cetera). (From traditional point of view they speak about “local events” on isolated island). And only later, after the artificial transport of some Byzantine chronicles into modern island England, this remarkable history of great events was artificially compressed, “decreased in the size” and was transformed into “small” local history on sufficiently “small area” – on the one island. 5.13. Where were located six original English kingdoms Britain, Kent, Sussex, Wessex, Essex and Mercia in 10-12 centuries.? The answer is given in the previous section. All these states (and nations) are real states (and nations) of medieval Europe in 10-12th cc. They took part in the conquest of Byzantine empire and then they created several feudal crusaders states. 1) Britain – is, most likely, Prussia = Prutenia or Turkey (= Vlachia). 2) Kent is, according to J.Blaire [6], the Saxons region = Saxonia. Let us recall that in 10-12th cc. on the German territory there exists Saxons area = Saxonia. 3) Sussex = South Saxons. 4) Wessex = West Saxons. 5) Essex = East Saxons. 6) Mercia. Possible this is again Germany or some of its
part, because in the Middle Ages Germany was called Moesia and, for example, town Marburg was called Merseburg, i.e. Merse + Burg ([10],p.263). It is also possible that chronicles mean Turkey when speaking about Mercia (Mersia). See, for example, large town Mersin in Turkey on the coast of Mediterranean sea. Anyway, we see that all six old-English kingdoms of 10-12th cc. can be located in Europe around the Byzantine Empire and all of then took part in its “feudal-state organization” during crusades. And only later all these states and nations were “transported” into island England, were artificially “decreased in size” and were inserted in a modern textbooks, where they are considered today as the initial English kingdoms of 5-8th cc.A.D.REFERENCESA.T.Fomenko. Methods for Statistical Analysis of Narrative Texts and Applications to Chronology. (Recognition and Dating of Dependent Texts, Statistical Ancient Chronology, Statistics of Ancient Astronomical Records). – Moscow, Moscow Univ.Press, 1990.The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Translated and edited by G.N. Garmonsway. 1990, Everyman’s library, J.M.Dent & Sons Ltd: London.A.T.Fomenko, V.V.Kalashnikov, G.V.Nosovskij. Geometrical and Statistical Methods of Analysis of Star Configurations. Dating Ptolemy’s Almagest. – CRC Press, 1993.A.T.Fomenko. Investigations in the History of Ancient World and Middle Ages. Mathematical Methods for Analysis of Sources. Global Chronology. – Moscow, 1994 (in print).A.T.Fomenko. Criticism of Traditional Chronology of Antiquity and Middle Ages. In which Century We Live ? – Moscow, 1994 (in print). 6*. J.Blair, Blair’s Chronological and Historical Tables from the Creation to the Present Time etc., G.Bell & Sons, London, 1882.J.Blair. Chronological Tables. Russian translation: Moscow, Moscow University, vols.1,2. 1808-1809. 7*. C.Bemont and G.Monod, Histoire de l’Europe au Moyen Age. Paris, 1921.C.Bemont and G.Monod, Histoire de l’Europe au Moyen Age. Petrograd, 1915.Nennius. Historia Brittonum. In the book: Galfridus Monemutensis – “Historia Britonum”. – Russian translation. Moscow, Nauka, 1984.Galfridus Monemutensis. “Historia Britonum”. – Russian translation. Moscow, Nauka, 1984.V.I.Matuzova. English Medieval Sources. – Moscow. Nauka, 1979.History of the Middle Ages. – Editor: S.D.Skazkin. – Moscow, Vyschaya Schkola. 1977, vol 1.M.P.Alexeev. About Anglo-Russian relations in the epoch of Jaroslav the Wise. – Scientific Bulletin. Leningrad Univ.Press, 1945, No.4, p.31.Chronica magistri Rogeri de Houedone, ed. W.Stubbs. – RS, N 51, vol.II. London, 1869, p.236. English translation: The Annals of Roger de Hoveden, comprising the history of England and of other countries of Europe from A.D. 732 to A.D. 1201. Tr.H.T.Riley, vol.1-2. London, 1853 (Bohn’s Antiquarian Library). Ancient Laws and Institutes of England…, ed.B.Thorpe, vol.1. London, 1840, p.198.Robert de Clari. The Conquest of Constantinople. – Moscow, Nauka, 1986.
J.Sunderland. Holy Books in the Light of Science. – Severno- -Zapadnoye izdatelstvo, 1925 (in Russian). 17*.E.Bickerman. Chronology of the Ancient World. Thames & Hudson, London, 1968.E.Bickerman. Chronology of the Ancient World. Russian translation: Moscow, 1975. I.A.Kryvelev. Excavations in Biblical Countries. – Sovetskaya Rossiya, Moscow, 1965 (in Russian).N.A.Morozov. Christ. (The History of Human Culture from the Standpoint of the Natural Sciences). Moscow and Leningrad. 1926-1932. vols. 1-7. (In Russian). 20*.Gregoras, Nichephorus. Byzantinae historiae. In J.P.Migne Patrologiae cursus completus. Series graeca, t.148,149. Paris, 1857-1886.Gregoras, Nichephorus. Roman History. Peterburg, 1862. Russian translation.Alexandria: Romance of Alexander the Great. Leningrad, 1966. (In Russian). (According to the Russian chronicle of 15th century).Benoit de Sainte-Maure. Chronique des ducs de Normandie par Benoit, publee… par C.Fahlin, t.I. – In: Bibliotheca Ekmaniana universitatis regiae Upsaliensis, 55. Uppsala, 1951, p.8-11.Layamon. Brut, or the Chronicle of Britain. Ed. F.Madden, vol.II. London, 1847, pp.525-526, vv.22589-22602.A.T.Fomenko. Empirico-Statistical Analysis of Narrative Material and its Applications to Historical Dating. Volume 1: The Development of the Statistical Tools. Volume 2: The Analysis of Ancient and Medieval Records. – Kluwer Academic Publishers. 1994. The Netherlands.M.A.Zaborov. History of Crusades in Documents and Materials. – Moscow, Vyschaya Schkola. 1977.Geoffroy de Villehardouin. La conquete de Constantinople. – Historiens et chroniqueurs du moyen age. Ed. A.Pauphilet. P., 1963.The Concise Columbia Encyclopeadia. – Avon Books. 1983. Columbia University Press. USA.Bartholomaeus Angicus. – De proprietatibus rerum. Apud A.Koburger. Nurenbergi, 1492, lib.XV, cap.CXXXI.Ex Annalibus Melrosensibus Ed.F.Liebermann, R:Pauli. – MGH SS, t.XXVII. Hannoverae, 1885, p.439&The Chronicle of Bury St.Edmunds, 1212-1301. Ed. A.Gransden. London-Edinburgh, 1964, p.10.Peter Hunter Blair. Roman Britain and Early England, 55 B.C. – - A.D.871. – The Norton Library History of England. W.W.Norton & Company. New York. London. 1963.Christopher Brooke. From Alfred to Henry III, 871-1272. – The Norton Library History of England. W.W.Norton & Company. New York. London. 1961.A.L.Morton. A People’s History of England. Lawrence & Wishart Ltd. London. 1979.

Feathering the Bass Drum

Feathering the Bass Drum
— The Power of Subtlety
by Phillip Smith
“Four to the bar,” “four on the floor,” or “feathering”: These are the most common terms used in jazz to
describe the act of lightly playing 4 quarter notes per measure on the bass drum.
Feathering came to prominence during the big band and bebop years (1930s-1940s). Prior to that the bass
drum was played heavier and was a more integral sound within the band itself especially in Dixieland and
New Orleans brass band styles where the imitation of marching drummers was the norm.
Many drummers believe that feathering actually stopped during the bebop years, but that couldn’t be further
from the truth. With bebop drummers “dropping bombs” on the bass drum it gave many the impression
that feathering had been replaced by constant syncopated bass drum fills. However close listening to
many of the great be bop drummers — Kenny Clarke, Max Roach, Philly Joe Jones etc. — will reveal their
mastery of feathering. And before you say that it is an antiquated sound that modern drummers spurn, let
me remind you that contemporary drumming greats Carl Allen, Kenny Washington, Lewis Nash, Steve
Gadd, Jeff Hamilton and (the late) Tony Williams all feather(ed) the bass drum.
Feathering was originally a way to emphasize and add some percussive attack to the acoustic bassist’s quarter-
note walking line. However it also does several specific things for the drummer and the rest of the
band. First it lays a solid foundation for the entire group. It also adds a layer of bottom end to the drummers
individual sound. In a normal swing groove the basic instruments are all high pitched (cymbals, hi
hats, & snare), thus the addition of some low end to the mix lends stability to the groove. Finally it directly
effects how the drummer plays. The hands play differently over the top of a constant quarter note bass
pattern than without. The feathering motion provides a solid reference that allows the hands to play syncopated
rhythms against it. Also many drummers find that without feathering it makes them feel obligated to
play more syncopated bass drum and snare drum ideas to fill spaces.
TECHNIQUE
One of the most important factors in achieving the correct feathering volume and sound characteristics is
proper pedal technique. Most drummers using the feathering technique play with a felt beater on a medium
to loose tensioned pedal. The bass drum is generally double headed with no hole in the front head and
tuned higher and more open (sometimes totally open or with just a felt strip) than the “rock/funk” sound
with a pillow.
Begin with the heel down style of playing. Some drummers play heel up (and play heel up well) however,
most find it more relaxing and easier to feather with their foot resting the entire time. The heel down technique
produces a more legato, resonate sound which is generally desired for this style.
The leg should remain very relaxed much like when you are sitting, dangling your legs off a boat dock or
ledge. Your foot should be comfortably on the pedal with your heel on the heel plate, though some players
like to have their foot high up on the footboard with the toe-stop removed. Using the weight of your leg
and perhaps a bit of foot pressure should make the beater sit about 1 to 2 inches from the head. When
making the stroke you should strive to keep that 1 to 2 inch distance between the head and beater. The
space should only widen when you intend on making accented strokes.
The feathering stroke is compared to lightly tapping your toe, however, plenty of sound will be generated
from the small ankle movements. Allow the beater to rebound off the head. The finishing position should
2
be the same as the starting position. The main point is to get the bass drum head vibrating just enough to
generate some low end frequencies, you don’t need to hear the attack and definition of each note.
PRACTICE TIPS
A good exercise to test your new technique and improve your control of the pedal is to play quarter notes
spanning the dynamic spectrum. Keep the dynamic level of the hands and the left foot on the hi hat the
same and only change the dynamic level of the bass drum. Also work on the inverse of this, keep the quarter
notes on the bass drum very soft and change the dynamic level of the other limbs. This will help you
develop the independence and touch needed to effectively feather the bass drum.
Practice feathering using the Chapin book, Advanced Techniques for the Modern Drummer. Play the entire
first half of the book with a light four on the floor. Also try feathering with many of the systems created
for use with the Ted Reed book, Syncopation. There are many other books available which will give you
plenty of practice on feathering. With a little creativity you can develop your own system of practice in no
time.
After a while put your new skill to work with some recorded music. There are numerous trio recordings
available that do not use drummers, the most common configuration being piano, bass and guitar. Many
of these recordings also feature legendary players such as Ray Brown, Ron Carter, and Christian McBride.
“Playing” with the masters is a great way to perfect your time, feel, touch and sound.
Lastly, make sure you spend some time playing brushes. Playing with brushes is an artform unto itself, and
a good brush technique on the drumset incorporates feathering the bass drum.
SOUND & APPLICATION
If you are ever in a playing situation where someone turns to you and tells you to stop playing the bass
drum, you are playing it too loudly. The old saying, “felt but not heard,” is never truer in this sense. The
feathering technique should never be heard as a separate rhythm riding above the volume of the rest of the
drumset. However it should be noticed when it is REMOVED from the foundation of the kit.
I’ve consciously experimented with stopping the bass drum during playing situations to see what effect it
might have on the music and my fellow players. In every encounter the entire group noticed that something
seemed to have gone wrong. One band member put it succinctly by saying it felt like the bottom had
dropped out of the group.
Practice, practice, practice and then practice some more. Feathering is foreign and difficult to master for
some, but mastering the technique is extremely rewarding and will add a tremendous amount of depth to
your playing. In time, feathering will become as natural as the jazz ride pattern or the hi hat on 2 & 4.
Plus, who knows, maybe the guys in the band will notice a whole new feel and depth to your playing.
Never underestimate the power of subtlety.
This article appeared in the September 2002 issue of Modern Drummer magazine and is reprinted with their permission.
Phillip Smith is a professional drummer and educator located in Atlanta, GA. He has performed with James
Williams, Donald Brown, George Coleman and many other jazz greats. He is currently the drummer for the
Bill Anschell trio and the Atlanta Symphony Pops Orchestra. Phillip is a clinician for Bosphorus cymbals and
also endorses Regal Tip sticks and brushes and Aquarian drum heads.
Summary of the main points in
The Art of Practice
Developing good practice skills can be an art form in itself. What we practice and how we practice are
very important to ones development as a musician.
WHAT DO YOU PRACTICE?
This will be different for everyone depending on your stage of musical development and what you need
in order to move forward. Here are some ideas and recommendations:
1 – Practice whatever you need to do a better job on the gigs you are currently playing. You will have
some relevant ideas to work on by remembering what songs or feels you had trouble with, listening
to a recording of the gig or by using feedback from the other band members.
2 – I recommend studying with a good private teacher to learn how to read music, develop good technique,
be exposed to interesting ideas and approaches, and to get clear and instant feedback on your
progress. By studying with a teacher you can also develop good practice discipline because you’ll
need to prepare a weekly lesson.
3 – Use your practice time to work on and develop your own ideas.
4 – Use your practice time to learn music and prepare for an upcoming gig, session or audition.
5 – Work on an idea that interests you that you read about in a magazine or that you hear someone play
on a CD, a live gig/clinic or an educational DVD/video.
HOW DO YOU PRACTICE?
Here are some practicing principles I use that have helped me continue to grow as a player.
1 – Practice Every Day with an occasional day off.
2 – Be Organized and Consistent – know what you are going to practice each day and stick to the plan.
3 – Use Patience and Take Your Time.
4 – Practice Quietly and Slowly. By doing this you gain control at many Volumes and Tempos.
5 – Figure out the Stickings and Hand/Foot combinations. With this process you gain an understanding
of the information in the idea. With Consistent, Slow and Relaxed practice you allow the
information to enter your subconscious.
6 – Slowly work out the motions necessary to play the ideas and eventually allow the motions start to
“play themselves.”
7 – Breath slowly, relax and use the practice as a meditation. Develop the habit of playing relaxed,
don’t hold tension in your body. Use a mirror to watch your motions.
8 – Eventually “hear” the idea in your head and allow your body to respond and play it effortlessly.
9 – Practice with Musical Form, (e.g. 4 & 8 bar phrases, 12 bar blues, 32 bar AABA song form) play
along with CDs, and practice both with and without a click track.
10 – Warm up before the practice session, stop when fatigued.

Medieval: Total War Unofficial Strategy Guide v 1.0

Medieval: Total War Unofficial Strategy Guide v 1.0
By: Lap
Email: l_a_p@hotmail.com
Date: 10/28/02
=============================================

Table of Contents
—————–
1. Introduction
2. Starting off
3. Getting Your Bearings
4. What now?
5. Water, Navies, and Trade
6. Diplomacy
7. Keeping the Peace (or keeping those peasants in line)
8. Vices and Virtues
9. Strategic Agents
10. Crusades and Jihads
11. The Church
12. The Inn
13. Sieging
14. Auto-Calcing
15. Advanced Strategies
16. Battles
|
|- Charging

17. Faction Suggestions (Early Age)
18. Legal Stuff

Introduction
————

Medieval: Total War is a game of infinite replayability and there is no way to
make a definitive walkthrough. Therefore, this guide does not contain a
walkthrough in any form. What is does contain is hints, tips, and strategy.
This guide does not list the units or buildings because if you bought M:TW then
you should already have this.

Starting Off
————

Once you have completed all the tutorials you should then try going for the
full blown campaign. I suggest not worrying about the difficulty you select
right now as that can be changed. Starting in the early period is recommended
because it is not so frantic and you won’t have 100 different unit thrown at
you in the beginning. Now comes the first hard decision you will have to make;
who to be? There is no real “best” group to be although some are clearly more
powerful than others. Since this is your first time you should make sure to
read all the descriptions for each group since they include almost every pro and
con of your group. For the first game try and choose a group that has a
difficulty of easy or normal. Once you have decided then go back to the main
menu and NOW decide your difficulty. If you are a Shogun veteran you might as
well play at a combined difficulty of normal or above or you may quickly get
bored. When I say combined difficulty I mean that if your group has a
difficulty of easy and you pick a game difficulty of hard then you have a
combined difficulty of normal. Please take note that the AI does not get
smarter past normal, they just cheat and get more money. New players should
have a combined difficulty of easy or normal. Now you can really get started in
building an empire (NOTE: The next few chapters assume you have chosen Early
Period although they can be helpful on any age).

Getting Your Bearings
———————

The first thing you do once you are actually in the campaign map is to take a
look around. You probably won’t be able to see much but that won’t be for long.
Right-click and examine all the territories you can see. Take note of how much
income they have, resources, trade goods, terrain, other specialties and
buildings there. Try to make a basic idea of which areas you think are most
important for you to defend or conquer. It is a good idea to incorporate allies
into your plan right from the start. Just make sure not to become to dependent
on a certain ally since you may not even be able to get him to ally with you or
he could backstab you later. On to getting buildings.

What Now?
———

Your first thought is probably “what to build?”. What you decide to build is
all dependent on what kind of strategy you are going to use as well as the
group you choose. Take a good long look at the fold out tech tree that came
with the game since this will be very useful the entire game. Now is a good
time to put together a basic strategy. Here are some you should think about:

The Diplomat-

This strategy involves using an almost complete defensive plan that
incorporates a slew of strategic agents. This is a good decision if you are bad
at the real time battles, just want something different, or if caution is just
your nature. The diplomats will concentrate on building up most of their
starting provinces since it is not likely that they will be conquering much.
Diplomats are preferably Christians with starting points that have convenient
trade options available to them (for example the Italians) as this will allow
them to make a lot of money while maintaining friendly relations with most
nations (this also helps with trading). Diplomats must use spies, emissaries,
inquisitors, and assassins to be successful. Making sure the enemy has few good generals as well as figuring out which side to take in wars will definitely be a high priority for the Diplomat. Bribing enemy armies and launching crusades will become the norm as the Diplomat.

Pros: If you can balance your enemies and allies while at the same time
manipulating the computers actions and units you can win the game using a
satisfying “invisible hand” method. Few provinces means it’s easier to guard
and defense is always easier than attack.

Cons: Not very expansive and you can easily get demoralized if you keep looking at the quick expansionist strategies the computer uses sometimes. Can seem weaker later in the game and this strategy is usually only meant to be kept until half way through the game (expert players can follow this method out the whole game if they are good).

The Moderate-

Seriously not much to say about type of player. They are the average player and most people will end up becoming them. They use a little of everything and have no actually strong point. Good in all areas.

Pros and Cons: None

The Warlord-

Everyone knows the warlord and whether you love or hate him he is here to stay.
The warlords concentrate on war and war alone. All efforts focus on more troops and maintaining a minimum defense of all conquered territories. The warlord
can quickly crush an entire faction but he can be brought down just as easy.

Pros: Most players that are good commanders love being able to do cool real
time battles. Can quickly gain the upper hand and their King’s usually have a
higher influence.

Cons: Because of the speed at which warlords expand at they are exceptionally vulnerable to have their empire crumble in just a few years. If the AI was a little more intelligent the amount of warlords would decrease dramatically
(further information on this will be explained later).

Now that you have seen the three most basic strategies you must decide which general direction your leaning too. You should then build accordingly.

Some generic tips about building:

-Build up your most valuable places first.

-Make each place build only 1-3 types of units. So one place should make only heavy cavalry, the other siege engines, other ships, other archery, etc.

-Build farm upgrades in every location that initially gives you more than 250
income (if you want you can put them in all your places but improving the
farmland 20% of a place that only gives you 50 bucks only means an extra 2.5
flourins).

-Build trading posts in places that have 2 or more tradable goods.

-Try to establish a long term plan for provinces. Make sure that if your goal
is to get gothic knights in a hundred years that you follow the tech tree from
the start to save you time and money.

-If a province makes a specific regional only unit make sure that you make an effort to build the needed structures to build that unit. Regional units are
always more powerful than similar units of similar costs. This is especially
true with Switzerland. Take Switzerland as fast as possible since it contains
the best spear units in the game.

-If a province gives +1 valor to a specific unit type it is only intelligent to
have that place building that kind of unit instead of the next province over
(there are some situational exceptions of course).

-If you have faction or religion only units in your tech tree try and work
towards them. These units, like regional units, are far more powerful than
generic units of the same type.

-Make sure that you don’t have important provinces with idle build orders.
Medieval: Total War has so many useful structures you can build almost the
entire game.

Water, Navies and Trade
———————–

Another feature new to the Total War series is the more interactive use of the
seas. Although this section may seem out of place this early in the game I
really have to stress the fact that the seas are important. Also if you are a
group with easy sea access you will want to try and set up trade as early as
possible. Controlling the seas is now extremely important and only increases as
the game goes on. The oceans allow you to get immense masses of wealth as well
as the ability to transfer units across the map in one turn. Personally, I
thought the MTW manual was very vague regarding trade and the sea so I will
clarify.

To begin your navy you are going to have to have at least one port. Once this
is built you will also have to build a shipwright so you can start building a
boat. You should build the cheapest boat possible and in three turns (yes it
takes 3 turns to make a ship of any kind so remember that it can clog up army
production in that territory). Now you have a near useless ship and almost
nothing will come from it alone. The only ability a lone ship has is fighting
other ships (this one is so weak that there isn’t even a point) and to scout out
coastal territories. What you need to do is make more ships. When you get your next ship move it out to the next sea territory. This creates a supply
chain/trade route to any foreign ports that are adjacent to the sea territories.
If you have a dock in a territory you can now transport units to any land
territory adjacent to your chain of ships. This is incredibly useful when
fighting across an ocean and if a lot of your places have docks than you can
have an army than can move throughout your empire in one turn.

Trading with ships is the primary use of a navy. To trade, set up a supply
chain/trade route to a foreign port as explained above. Next you need to build a trading post. Right-click the trading post you have to see how much money you are gaining from trade. This is dependent upon the amount of tradable
resources of the territories that are trading as well as the type of your trade
building you have. The perfect trade route would involve many foreign
territories that have a lot of tradable resources. You should try to make sure
you have ports in territories that have 2 or more tradable resources and that
they have the highest type of trade building you can stand to have. Here is a
list of things that you should check if your trade route isn’t working:

1. Do you have a trading post in your territory?
2. Is there an unbroken line of ships to the foreign territory?
3. Do both your territory and theirs have a port?
4. Are there any enemy ships in any sea territory that your trade route is in?
5. Do both territories have tradable resources?
6. Are you at war with the target nation?

Ships of nations you are at war with break trade routes. You cannot trade past the point where the line is broken and you cannot transport troops past that point either. This can be devastating. Some nations may rely almost completely on income from trade and by placing a single ship in the trade route you can bankrupt them rather quickly. For example, I was playing as Italy with almost 2/3 of my income from trade and I had a large standing army. The Byzantines declared war one me and broke my trade routes. I was about 1500 short every turn and I was forced to choose between setting my troops on a rampage to pillage and kill themselves (so I wouldn’t have to pay support) or trying to make peace with the Byzantines. It broke my empire in half. So you should also remember to have either very strong ships in your trade route or a few extra ships guard the routes.

Making amphibious landings is a great way to catch the computer by surprise.
Most of the time the computer keeps minimal forces inside its empire while most of their forces are spent guarding their boarders. This is also useful for
quick in and out slash and burn attacks. This is especially fun as the Danes
early in the game, using Vikings to pillage everyone’s territories. You must
remember that if you make a landing upon a territory could mean that you might have no way back. If for example, you land your invasion force in Ireland you will not be able to transport that army back until you build a port in Ireland.
Even if the place you are invading has a port when you invade it you shouldn’t expect it to be there after your troops are done pillaging it. It is for this reason that you should expect your army to be a suicide army. If your army survives and establishes a foothold in the territory you attacked, or if they make it back to the Motherland safely just consider it an added bonus.

Control of the seas is important to all but some of the most landlocked nations of the world (like Poland). You should strive to get trade routes established with major trading ports (Constantinople, Antioch, and Venice are all places that can get over 1000 flourins a year JUST from properly established trade).
Even if you don’t have any good trade opportunities having a few ships can be useful for either harassing your enemies trade routes as well as transporting your troops. A few well placed ships can save your armies turns upon turns of movement. Bottom line; Do not underestimate the power of navies.

Diplomacy
———

Diplomacy is definitely an aspect of the game that you can choose to pursue to any extent you wish. How far you choose to pursue it usually depends on what you enjoy more. Do you enjoy trampling your opponents with a massive army or watching your opponents ex-allies crush them as they succumb to inner treachery? Both are equally satisfying and can radically alter the game. The emissary and princess are your two most basic units for establishing diplomatic ties. The princess is usually your best bet to getting an alliance or cease fire with a nation. This option is not always available since princesses are randomly created by your married king. It is also important to note that any Muslim nation will not produce any princesses ever. If you do not have any princesses an emissary will do although they do not have as high of chance of having their offer accepted.

Try to establish allies wherever you can. Whenever you go to war you should try and have it so that you are allied with every nation except the one that you are at war with. Fighting on two or more fronts because you angered too many nations is usually not a good idea. Before you go to war with anyone you should look at the diplomacy screen and figure out who the target nation is allied with. Starting a war with a nation could get your alliances canceled or you may have a few more people to fight. It’s not uncommon to see over five of your allies bail out on their alliance with you after you attack someone. The computer usually goes with whatever ally has more influence and power but I have seen nations side with nations as small as the Aragonese even though I controlled half of Europe.

In summary, diplomacy is a very simple concept that you can use how you please.
Basically, just try to have a lot of allies backing you up and always make sure
that anything you do diplomatically should be to your benefit.

Keeping the Peace (or keeping those peasants in line)
—————————————————–

Rebellions, riots, and discord…You will become familiar with rebels and their
incessant annoyances. Rebellions will be a constant the entire game. You should
learn to use the shift key often (every turn actually) to make sure that none
of your provinces will be attacked by rebels. If you are having a problem with
high rebellion chances in your territories here are some tips to remedy the
situation:

-The easiest thing to do is lower taxes. This is the first thing you should do.

-Produce cheap to make armies with a large unit size. Feudal sergeants and
spearmen are good units to quell a rebellious populace. The larger the unit
size, the more they lower the chance of rebellion.

-Look at the territories religious demographic. It is harder to control a
population that worships Allah if you are a Christian kingdom. Put some priests of your religion there to lower the chance of rebellion. A church has the same effect.

-Examine the governor of the territory. If the governor has some awful traits
attached to him that lower happiness that could be why your subjects are so
unruly. A governor with low dread and/or low piety could be the reason for
unhappiness. If your territory has a high level of zeal than piety is more
important to the general than dread. Otherwise dread is the larger factor. If
there is no governor than find one with high piety or dread. All of your
territories should have governors as there is almost always no downside to
having them.

-Are you excommunicated? If you are Christian and you have displeased the pope
you may have gotten excommunicated. You can easily tell if you are
excommunicated by looking at any of your generals and looked at the crosses in
piety. If they are broken you are excommunicated. Being excommunicated angers
your subjects depending on how zealous they are.

-Check out the vices of your king. Did he just get a vice that lowers
happiness? This applies to every territory you have. There is very little you
can do about this.

-Is the province recently conquered? If it is then lower the taxes to very low
and put some more troops on that province. The populace will slowly accept your
rule.

-Do none of the following seem to apply? The province may just be a naturally
unruly place. This is especially true of Scotland and Portugal who can become
very rebellious for no reason at all. Sometimes you may have to consider if the
province is really worth keeping. Personally, sometimes I would just let the
rebels have it. If you have to have a massive army kept on the territory at all
times with very low taxes on the province you might actually be wasting money.
The support of that army may actually outweigh the amount of money being
produced by the province.

I really have to stress using the shift key every turn. Provinces can become
filled with unrest for almost no reason at all. The larger your empire gets the
more rebellions become a problem. Provinces that you have held for the entire
game may start to act up and if kept unchecked they can bring your empire to
its knees. Your expansion is usually not actually halted by the enemy but the
rebels. Say you attack a neighboring province with 1000 men. You lose 400 or so
in the battle for the territory. Depending on the territories previous loyalty
and your religion you may find that even with very low taxes that place may
still have a high chance of rebellion. Now you are essentially stuck in that
territory. If you move the army out of the province you are likely to have a
loyalist uprising in that territory. Speaking of loyalist rebellions, here is a
list of the different kinds of rebellions:

Peasant Uprising-This is the weakest of the different kinds of uprisings. An
army of peasants that is easily dispatched by a force, usually less than half
their number. These occur when one of your usually loyal territories is taxed
too much.

Religious Uprising-These can actually be a problem. They are created when the
province becomes disloyal do to the religious neglect in that province. These
armies contain a multitude of units.

Bandits-These are about as dangerous as the religious uprisings. They only
occur when there is no castle or less than 100 units in the province.

Loyalist Uprising-These are by far the most dangerous uprisings. They can
contain generals of almost any power and troops to match. This isn’t really why
they are that powerful. It’s more the fact that your enemy has control of this
army. So if you are defending a province and a loyalist rebellion occurs while
you are being attacked, the computer now has a larger force to fight against
you. The worst possible scenario you can get yourself into with these things is
if you leave a territory unguarded, or if you are retreating from that province
back to a safer one, odds are a Loyalist rebellion will spring up and the
computer might have even more of a force than they had when you first attacked.
Luckily, loyalist rebellions only happen in the most previously loyal of
conquered territories.

When you actually defeat a rebellion you are given three options:

1. Kill/Enslave them all – Lowers chance of rebellion but may give the king
some bad traits
2. Kill/Enslave the ringleaders – Kind of a neutral thing.
3. Release them all – Can give your king a mercy trait that adds happiness.

NOTE: While not really rebellions faction reappearances are actually more
dangerous than Loyalist uprisings. These happen when randomly after a faction
has been eliminated. A lost heir will appear and about 3 large armies will
attack three or so of your provinces. These always appear in a place where the
faction occupied. These reappearance become brutal later in the game when there
is so many eliminated factions and you have a larger area to protect.

Vices and Virtues
—————–

One of the most unique things about MTW is the introduction of the vices and virtues system wherein generals, governors, and royalty gain traits depending
upon their actions. This system is very important to pay attention to as it can
make or break your empire in multiple ways.

Right-clicking on any leader will bring up information on them. The different
traits can all be explained just by moving your mouse over the trait. You will
want to take note of the following:

Loyalty: This is probably the least important trait. This trait is almost
always near or at full and if it is not just assign that person a land title.
Unless you are frequently losing or are a very weak country, your generals
should all have relatively high loyalty. While I consider this trait relatively
low on your priority list it should be put to the top if any of your leaders
has a low amount of loyalty. This is because leaders with low loyalty are very
dangerous. Not only can they defect from your rule but if enough of your
leaders are disloyal a civil war with start (I believe a leader of royal blood
must also be disloyal for this to occur but don’t risk it at all). The civil
wars will take roughly half of your territories and pit them against the
remaining territories. This is devastating even though you are allowed to
choose which side you favor in the rebellion. A civil war will basically stop you
from doing anything until you get your land restored. During this time
computers like to “liberate” your rebellious territory. You’ve got a few options
if you want to raise the loyalty of your nobles.

-Give them a land or office title (Try to distribute all of your titles).

-If you have an extra princess lying around getting old and fat you might as
well have her marry one of the generals (although you must remember that this
gives the noble royal status).

-If all else fails, have an emissary strip the noble of his title and give the
title to a more qualified candidate.

Piety: Piety has only two real functions. One is to make it harder for the
noble to be tried by an inquisition and two is to make zealous territories
happy. Try to have high piety nobles governing highly zealous territories.

Dread: This is the most important in keeping your territories in line. High
dread means the people fear and respect the governor and they will rebel less
(if you want proof, take a place that has a high chance of rebellion and assign
it a governor with high dread). A very easy way to get some dread is to
slaughter prisoners in battle for no reason (gotta love the sound that button
makes).

Command: This is very important in battle. Each command increases the valor of
everyone in that army. Command is a key factor in every battle and it is taken
into consideration a lot when you auto-calc a battle. You can easily gain
command by having generals win battles.

Acumen: This is right up there with command on the importance scale. For the
most part you should have a few good generals and everyone else should be nerdy
acumen heavy governors. Also try and make your good generals governors of the
lesser territories unless they have high acumen. Whenever you have a high
income territory like Constantinople or Venice you should strive to get find a
general with the most acumen you can find. You should even go to the extent of
looking within army stacks. Meaning that you should check out your army stacks
and then look inside them, right clicking each unit on the bottom to see if
there’s some general you haven’t noticed that is brimming with potential. Having
a few more acumen on a general in a key region can mean around 500 extra
flourins a turn in a place that may have only produced 750 before.

The Other Stuff: There are tons of traits that can be listed at the bottom of
the nobles information window. These are really what you have to watch out for.
They are only really dangerous because a lot of the traits are gained randomly
and the changes they cause can be quite dramatic. Here are a few of the more
common/important ones:

NOTE: All X’s mean there are many words that are just used as different degrees
for this trait.

Secret X – There are many secret traits that your leaders can have. Only spies
can uncover them. Until they are uncovered they really have no effect.

X Builder- You get the “X Builder” title depending on how much you build. This
is usually given to the king and means more happiness.

Hesitant- This one is as annoying as it is uncommon. Any time you say “Call off
the attack” in the attack method menu you have a chance of getting this trait.
Hesitant gives you -2 morale.

Skilled/Expert Defender/Attacker- These traits all give you either a +1 or +2
bonus to command when attacking or defending. You get these traits by doing a
good job defending or attacking.

Skilled/Expert Last Stand- This is one of my favorites. These traits give you a
bonus to command when you are outnumbered by more than 2 to 1. It’s quite a
status symbol.

Questionable Courage/Coward- These traits are devastating. What could be worse
than when you are losing battles than having your generals become worse? If you
retreat you will most likely get a coward related trait that effects morale.

X Leader-These are excellent as they give a massive bonus in combat. Make
people with any of these traits your generals.

X Warrior- Usually a bonus to health and valor. Gained by the general’s unit
performing well in combat.

Not So Bold- When your generals sits back for too many battles you get this
negative trait.

Gluttony- When the taxes in a province are high the governor may get this
negative trait.

There are so many more traits but most of them are acquired randomly and most
of them are fully explained just by passing over the trait with the mouse. The
main things you need to do are to check all your major generals to make sure
they are combat worthy. One of the most important things to look for is that
the general doesn’t have many (or any) low morale modifiers. You could have a
general with 8 command but if he has -6 morale your better off with a 1 command
general. Nothing is worse than when you go into battle with a huge well
equipped army and right when you are about to close in for the kill your
soldiers see (Not even start to fight but just SEE) an enemy unit they all
high-tail it out of there.

Also take note that all of your king’s territory affecting traits effect all of
your territories. This can mean immense benefits for your kingdom but it also a
double edged sword. Say for example that your king has a trait that gives a
territory 10% agricultural bonus. This bonus applies to all territories! It is
best used for the +10 happiness modifiers since you will have far less
rebellions, Unfortunately, this can destroy your entire empire. Let’s say you
have +20 happiness on your king and you are a fairly large empire. Now let’s
imagine that you have just conquered a few territories and you are just barely
keeping them from rebellion. Then your king dies. Suddenly you lose that +20
happiness bonus and half your provinces, even ones that didn’t seem to be a threat
before are rebelling like mad. This is why it’s usually a good idea to start
reinforcing all your territories when your king begins to reach old age. You
never know when your king will die.

*Through rebellion comes peace* – This is a little trick you can use to make
your entire kingdom happier. If you have a rebellion on your hands (or you can
just make one by being a bastard to the people) you can then eliminate the
rebellion and when you are given the choice of what to do choose to let them
all go. This usually gives your king the trait Occasional Mercy +10 or
Frequent Mercy +20 and -2 dread. This bonus applies to all your territories so
I suggest that each one of your kings get Occasional Mercy.

Strategic Agents
—————-

All strategic agents are useful scouts. So if they aren’t doing anything have
them moving around. Remember that strategic agents can also use a dock to
travel to any other dock in the world.

Emissary- Used for making alliances or cease fires. They can also be dropped on your own nobles to strip them of their title (This is useful for when say, your governor of Constantinople just got a trait that saps half the cash from his territory). Remember that striping a noble of his title will result in a eduction in loyalty. Emissaries can also bribe generals to your side.

Assassin- Ah, who doesn’t love a cold blooded killer for hire? With these
deliverers of death you can try and assassinate any strategic agent save a jihad or crusade depending on the valor of your unit and the valor/rank of the target.

Spy- Spies are your best source of information and they are especially useful for finding out how powerful enemy generals are. They can also uncover hidden traits. Spies can attempt to bribe gate guards to open castle doors.

C. Bishop/O. Priest/Alim- These are all religious men that increase the
percentage of people believing in a certain religion. Remember to use these to quell religious rebellions by changing the religion to yours. It is also
usually a good idea to put some of your priests in a territory you are planning
on conquering so that it’s easier to control once you conquer it.

C. Cardinal/O. Bishop/Imarn- These are improved religious men.

Inquisitor- Used to raise the zeal in whatever province the inquisitor is in.
After around 60% zeal or so the province will become out of control and many
people will die. Think of putting one in an enemies place for fun. NOTE:
Catholic priests and bishops will reduce the effect of Inquisitors if they are
in the same province. Inquisitors can also be dropped on nobles to try them for
heresy. The chance of success depends on the valor of the inquisitor and the
piety of the target.

Grand Inquisitor- Improved Inquisitors.

Crusades and Jihads
——————-

Crusades and jihads can be your best friend or worst enemy. Crusades are
available only to Catholic factions and Jihads are available only to Muslims.
Sorry Orthodox factions, you guys get the shaft. Anyways crusades are only used
when attacking provinces and jihads are used for reclaiming conquered provinces
(AKA a sort of defense). Both crusades and jihads are dependent on zeal.
Without a good amount of zeal the crusade or jihad will be weak and/or fail.
Crusades and jihads are very useful early in the game and continually become
weaker as the game progresses. This is due to the advancement of technology and
the decline of the church. Zeal is usually always on the decline so it is best
to use the crusades and jihads as fast as possible. All you need to do is build
a jihad or crusade, select an appropriate target and that’s pretty much it.

Crusades that pass through Christian lands gain followers depending on the
province’s zeal. They will even take troops from your enemies and add them to
you. By doing this you can essentially have your enemies fight for you. Leaders do have the option of not letting the crusade pass, in which case a fight will ensue. This rarely happens though. Crusades also produce unique units. These can be fanatics, order foot soldiers, Teutonic sergeants, Knights of Santiago, Teutonic knights, knights hospitaller, and knights templar. All except the fanatics and order foot soldiers are among the best cavalry in the game. The order foot soldiers can also give you an edge. These units, if used quickly in the beginning of the game can annihilate enemies.

Another great thing about crusades and jihads is that you can effectively use
them to have an entire army cross one of your allies territories. You can drop
any army you want into the crusade (although they cannot leave until the
crusade is over). I personally love being the Spanish and sending a crusade
that contains all my armies through France, Germany, and Italy on it’s way to
take Constantinople.

If the Pope calls for a crusade and you send a crusade to whatever the Pope
asks you to do you won’t have to pay him to start the crusade. You can also not start crusades if you are excommunicated.

Many of the following also applies to jihads.

Pros of crusades: Can cross other nations you don’t want to go to war with and at the same time you can steal their troops. Very powerful units are produced from crusades.

Cons of crusades: Takes four years to make. Can’t be done if excommunicated.
Costs a lot of money and cannot change it’s destination territory. Becomes
useless late in game.

The Church
———-

The Papacy is annoying as hell. They are natives of Rome and will reappear
every so often if you conquer them. The Pope will excommunicate you if you
fight Christians and me call for crusades against you. The Pope may
occasionally send you money if you are an extremely good with “spreading gods
word”. I would only take on the papacy if you feel you have absolutely no need
for crusades. If the papacy is destroyed so are all excommunications. You can
also build your own churches too increase faith. Constructing cathedrals will
amplify the effect and give you money from it.

The Inn
——-

The inn is a great tool. It allows you to attract mercenary units of any kind.
If you have a wealth of money I would suggest building a couple of these. The
support costs for the units are immense but inns can provide entire armies in
case of emergencies. Mercenaries cannot become governors or be resuplied.
Remember to disband excess mercenary units if you are getting low on cash.

Sieging
——-

Whenever you siege a castle the easiest way to win it is to just sit there. The
easiest way to defend against a siege is to just sit there and hope for
reinforcements. Exciting, huh? The only time you should ever attack a castle is
if it is a key territory and you need it right then and there. I would still
only recommend doing this if right-clicking on the castle reveals that you
still have over 3 years before the castle falls. Only sally forth from the
castle if you have far more units than your opponent. Remember if you siege to
have plenty of siege weapons.

Auto-Calcing
————

There comes a time when battle become repetitive (especially in non-crucial
battles versus rebels and such). When this time comes it means that it is time
for the auto-calc (or letting the computer resolve the battle for you).
Generally the computer will almost always do worse for you than a skilled
player so I would advise against using this all the time. Auto-calc works well
if you have a lot of command/valor/morale and a mixed force. The computer DOES
take into account the combination of units you have so don’t think just by
making 1000 peasants that the computer will favor your 1000 peasants vs. 500 well trained troops. If you auto-calc a siege try to have at least some siege weapons.

Advanced Strategies
——————-

If you are losing in the big picture the easiest thing to do is defend and wait
for an attack. As a human you should be able to defend against over 3x your
number. After you crush an invasion counterattack the weakened force and take some territory in the process.

Slash and Burn- This is one of my favorite strategies since it solves so many
problems. This strategy involves taking everything you have (save garrisons for stopping rebels) and spreading to any province you can take. The entire goal is not to gain land. The goal is to destroy your enemies buildings and kill troops. This strategy usually results in a huge cash influx. You can then use this to support massive armies. I am occasionally force into using this
strategy when my empire gets enormous. When you are going bankrupt this is the ultimate solution to your support costs because
A. It will kill a lot of your
men (no more support) as well as the enemies.
B. You get tons of cash pillaging
C. The enemy will be set back many years because of all the stuff you destroy.
You might also actually get to keep one or two of the territories you take too.
The only con to this are that you could keep the generic level of technology
down (not that you might care but…). You can use this on a broad scale if you want. All you have to do is keep a central production area (Constantinople for
example) and keep the rest of the world in ruin. This insures you will have the best units. This strategy is great fun as the Vikings.

Scorched Earth- This is useful for retreating. When you know the province you are looking at will get miserably crushed next turn. All you have to do is sell all the buildings in the territory and withdrawal all your troops to a larger force or more defensible territory. Your enemy will probably have to face rebels too (just make sure you don’t move all your troops away if you know there may be a loyalist rebellion if you leave.

Wealth Beyond Measure- Feasibly only obtainable as Italy, Egypt, or
Constantinople since you need a lot of money to pull this one off. This one
involves merely defending every major sea port and ruling the seas. Each major dock territory can make over 1000 flourins a turn. You can just buy armies through mercenaries or bribery.

For the Glory of God- This strategy is better known as “Crusades Everywhere!”.
This works very well with the zealous Spanish. All you have to do is
continually make crusades as soon as possible and load them up with everything you can find. Strike quick and fast.

The Wall- This strategy is very popular and can be used by any nation. All it
involves is keeping all your troops on the borders and minimal troops behind
it. The advantage is that you are very hard to be invaded but things like
rebels and reappearing factions can cripple you in no time.

The Moving Wall- This strategy works best if you have many high tech units. All you have to do is only attack weak territories and really only play a defensive game. You just pick a lot of high tech defensive units and slowly advance, never attacking a large force. This works so well because defenders always have an advantage.

Heir Elimination- The goal is not to conquer and entire faction but to make it
disappear completely by killing all the heirs. Assassins, inquisitors, and army kill squads all become focused on hunting down every last heir. This is a very risky but fun strategy. All forces in battle should focus on killing the
heirs/kings.

Zerg- Everyone loves getting Zerg rushed! This strategy involves tons and tons of cheap units thrown everywhere. Vikings, Scottish Highlanders, Steppe Calvary, Woodsmen, Militia Sergeants…pretty much anything that is cheap to make. Just continually produce these units and win with sheer numbers. This strategy works well in conjunction with the Slash and Burn strategy. Rebellions are also easy to prevent since you have so many units to use for garrison.

Battles
——-

Eventually you will have to take the field of battle (and if you don’t you
shouldn’t play MTW). This is a whole different game here and mastering it can be hard. You’ll learn to love it after you watch your own home grown army crush your enemies. Commanding battles yourself should always mean a better kill ratio but the downside is that battles take time. I definitely don’t suggest actually commanding every battle that happens since that would take forever.
Anyways here is a list of tips for battle that you should keep in mind:

NOTE: This is really meant for single player. Humans are smarter and less
predictable so they may see through some of these tricks and such.

-Always keep a balanced force. MTW is like any real time strategy in that it
uses a kind of rock-paper-scissors system. (You need spearmen to kill cavalry, cavalry to kill bowman, etc.).

-Fear is contagious. Routing units scare nearby allied troops.

-Do not have a king in a territory that will have a battle since the king will
always become the general even if he has only 1 command compared to another general in the same territory with 9.

-Do not charge troops until the last minute since it saves energy.

-Select all your units if there is a mass rout and see if it is possible to
rally any of them.

-When on defense take the highest ground possible.

-When on defense you have to choose whether or not to be close to the edge of the map or far away. I usually suggest being close to the edge since it makes enemies have to walk a very long way so they get tired. They also will have to walk through routing units. My troops also get more rest too. The downside to this is that if your units rout close to the map edge you have almost no chance of rallying them.

-If a unit is out of ammo or become useless for some reason (fatigue,
casualties, etc.) don’t be afraid to right-click them and hit “Withdraw from
Battle”. Unlike rout, this won’t scare your own units and you can still use
this unit later on in the campaign.

-Don’t be afraid to use large group formations. Experiment with them and
conclude on how they are best used (PC Gamer’s December 2002 issue has a great section on the use of group formations).

-Use the strength of your army. (If you have tons of archers try to have them
use all their ammo before you attack with the rest).

-Units suffer penalties the more tired they are and the more surrounded they
are.

-Flanking is your best friend. You can even defeat a group of pikemen with
cavalry if you charge from the back for side.

-Calvary is key since mobility is key to winning battles.

-Make sure a siege weapon has enough crew to fire before you put it into
battle.

-if a battle is so close that you are running low on guys don’t feel bad about
charging units with missile units (although it is usually best to do this
against other weak units like missile units.

-Try and sneak around a horse or two to take out siege weapons.

-Ballistas suck.

-Be wary of turning your guys around while they are fighting. Getting attacked from behind may cause them to route.

-Guard your missile units.

-Bridge battles are the hardest battles in the game. Make sure you have at
least 3x as many guys if attacking.

-Hashinin can give the enemy quite a surprise.

-Siege weapons aren’t just for castles .

-Kill enemy generals since they’ll take a morale hit.

-Use trees to conceal troops.

-Use trees to protect from cavalry and arrows.

-If a multifunction battle starts let the enemy either come to you or fight it
out between themselves, then sweep in for the kill.

-Be a sore loser. Kill prisoners if your going to lose.

-Swap reinforcements until you find the best combination for the start of the
battle.

-Peasants and units with low valor/morale can actually be harmful to your
armies. Be wary of using them since they rout easily. This can cause the fear
to spread to your good troops.

-Use the weather to your advantage. If you are attacking a group of many
archers/gunpowder units attack in rain.

-Try not to send your general to the front.

-Use wedge formations and charges to break enemy formations.

-If a unit works best in deep formations keep them in deep formations.

-If the battle contains more than just two factions than let the other two
fight it out while you hide in the corner. Then come in for the kill when they
are both near death.

-Press ‘P’ so you can pause the game and give orders better.

-If the enemy has a lot of anti-cavalry you should dismount your cavalry.

-Don’t underestimate the power of weapons that cause fear. Even if your siege weapon only kills a few guys it is still scaring the enemy.

-Don’t underestimate short range units like Spanish Jinets and Naptha Throwers.
These units can destroy waves of men. The key to their success is to put them
on hold position and turn off the skirmish mode so they don’t run away and
interrupt their loading every time the enemy takes a step.

-Don’t overload on artillery.

-When placing a siege weapon notice where that siege weapon is able to fire
since it cannot be moved once the battle commences.

-When attacking a castle you have two options. One is too surround the castle
and the other is to focus on one part. The advantage to surrounding is that you confuse the enemy but you get hit by all of the towers in the castle. The focus method is more predictable but you are only hit by half the castles towers.

Charging
……..

Choosing to charge after a fleeing enemy is a risky thing to do. This is
because it tires your troops and it could possibly be a trap. The advantages
are that you will kill many more people, most likely prevent them from
rallying, and also your troops/cavalry will probably gain valor. Even if you
don’t think the computer is clever doesn’t mean that it can’t spring a trap on
you. The computer may be able to rally its troops around and crush yours. It is even worse if you chase all their troops to the end of the map only to find
that they have tons of reinforcements popping in. Your troops will be ripe for
the pickings after they just exhausted themselves with all that chasing.
Generally don’t charge unless you know the computer has no more units in
reserve.

Faction Suggestions (Early Age)
——————————-

Almohads- Somewhat easy. Make use of their special unit as soon as possible.
The only real decision you have to make is whether to attack Egypt or Spain.

Byzantines- Fairly easy. Focus on one front, work towards kataphraktoi, while
building Byzantine infantry, spearmen, archers, and naptha throwers. Try to
start trading early on.

Danes- Oddly enough the Danes are ranked amongst the best factions by many
players. The Danes are moderately hard and they should concentrate on capturing
Norway and terrorizing the North Sea. You could also try to find a weakness in
the Germans or try taking Russia.

Egypt- Egypt is the easiest of the Muslim factions. Egypt is an excellent
territory, they can easily trade, and they have a few good unique units. Focus
on capturing the coastal provinces to the east such as Antioch. Trade there is
great.

English- Most newbies decide to play as English their first time. England is
rather complex for a beginner so I would not recommend it for the first try.
They are trapped by France though they do have excellent unique and province
only units.

French- The French are relatively easy. They are great at crusading and are only
rivaled by Germany in the knight department. I would suggest crusading for a
while until you no longer care about being excommunicated. Take Switzerland
ASAP since the pikemen and halberdiers are excellent.

Germany- The strategy here…pure and utter war. kill anyone you want and work
towards the high level knights. Take Switzerland ASAP. Germany is the only
country that can fight a war on all fronts with relative ease.

Italy- One of my personal favorites. Italy should specialize in trade and
become a monetary powerhouse. Whether or not you choose to get rid of the
Papacy is up to you. I recommend a mix of The Moving Wall with Wealth Beyond
Measure with a heavy emphasis on Italian Infantry.

Polish- These are the real underdogs of the early age. They are surrounded and
have no special units of any use. I would suggest taking over Russia or
Byzantines first.

Spanish- Crusades are the name of the game here. Take out the Almohads or the
Byzantines and build a lot of Spanish Jinets since they are very versatile.

Turkish- Competing with the Polish for the worst faction of the time. The Turks
have some ok unique units but other than that they have no other advantages.

Legal Stuff
———–

This document is copyright 2002 by Layne Phillips, the sole owner of this
document. This document is protected by international copyright laws. If you
wish to publish or post this document somewhere you must have my express
permission.

GUILD WARS GAME GUIDE

GUILD WARS GAME GUIDE

By Matthew Rorie
Design by Collin Oguro
So far as PC games go, few titles in 2005 have generated as much buzz as Guild Wars has. This online-only multiplayer game incorporated MMORPG elements into a fast-paced, skill-based, combat-focused game that plays as something of a nouveau Diablo II, with some stunning graphics and addictive gameplay. In it, players will have to team up to overcome the vicious forces that wish to overwhelm the human kingdoms of Tyria, and fight their way from the blasted lands of Ascalon in the east over the mountains that block their passage to the western kingdoms of Kryta. Along the way, they’ll chop through thousands of Charr, evil dwarves, golems, and undead foes, all in the hopes of eventually passing through the Ascension and taking their rightful place in the Hall of Heroes, where they’ll battle for dominance in an eternal war. Fun!
GameSpot’s Game Guide to Guild Wars serves as something of an entry-level guide to starting out in the world of Tyria. We’re going to describe the basics of each class, run down how best to start your character’s adventures, give you tips on crafting new items, and share some of our PVP experiences with you. Enjoy!
Classes
Warrior
Warriors are somewhat unique in the world of Ascalon, as they’re one of the only classes that can be reliably counted on in toe-to-toe combat. Every other class in the game is going to be attempting to stay away from enemies, for the most part, due to their focus on ranged spells and weapons and poor armor stats, but as a Warrior, you’re going to be expected to get toe-to-toe with your foes and wail on them with an axe, sword, or hammer. To that end, you’re going to be able to wield much thicker armor than other classes will, and will possess more health as well.
The prototypical Warrior secondary profession is Monk, which offers you up a number of healing spells which can let you quickly restore your health when you’re under the brunt of an enemy assault. Healing Wave, especially, is a relatively cheap (10 Energy) and quick-casting spell that can offer up a good amount of health regeneration, while later spells like Mending will let you trade in some of your Energy restoration for a constant amount of health restoration. The negative side of being a Monk is that you can sometimes find yourself with spells that you won’t use too often when you group up with an excellent primary Monk, since they’ll be healing you as best they cane, but your skills will serve as a useful backup in case you get overwhelmed.
Other useful secondary professions include Ranger, which can give you another useful healing spell in Troll Ungeunt and allow you to tame a wild beast to act as a secondary source of damage, and Necromancer, which offers a number of ways to restore your health, often while damaging enemies, as with spells like Life Siphon, Vampiric Gaze, and Vampiric Touch. There’s a common theme here: as a Warrior, you’ll likely want to grab a secondary class that can offer you some way to restore your own health. You know, just in case. Classes like Mesmer and Elementalist are therefore somewhat odd choices as a secondary class, if only because they lack a large number of relevant self-buffs and are also somewhat energy intensive.

Warriors are expected to get down and dirty by entering into melee combat with their enemies.
The primary drawback of the warrior is his or her inability to quickly regenerate energy, and their overall lack of a large energy pool. Since Elementalists, Monks, and the like will usually gain bonuses to energy regeneration from equipment, and Warriors usually won’t, they’ll be held to the default two points of energy regeneration for quite a while, meaning that it’ll be more difficult for them to build energy back up during a fight. Their smaller energy pool will also restrict them in their use of high-cost powers, meaning that Warriors will have to choose a secondary profession with care, lest they wind up with something that offers powerful but high-cost abilities that can only be used a few times before they run dry of mana.
Luckily, Warriors aren’t required to use Energy for many of their own skills, and those that do use energy will rarely take more than five energy at a shot. Instead, they siphon their own adrenaline during battle and use that to power their attacks. Adrenaline can be built up at a rate of one point per successful strike in battle, but you won’t get a real numerical readout of your adrenaline reserves during combat; instead, your adrenaline-using skills will gradually light up from their normal blackened state as you hit things, and when you have enough adrenaline to use an ability (you can check the amount required on your skills window), they’ll light up completely, signifying that they’re ready to go. Many of the weapons-based skills will add status effects or have non-damaging effects on enemies, such as Bleeding, Deep Wounds, or knockdown. You can use them to vary up the pure-damage capabilities of the warrior a bit.
One thing to mind as a warrior is your aggro radius. You’ll notice that there’s a little white circle around your character on your compass in the upper-right corner of the screen; this indicates the distance at which enemies will notice you and start attacking. Since Warriors are often going to have to approach enemies, due to the fact that they use melee weapons, you’ll need to be very, very careful that you don’t accidentally aggravate more than one enemy group at a time. You might be able to survive such an encounter, but you need to recall that there are a bunch of teammates behind you that are very dependent on their energy to survive, since they have less health and armor than you do; taking on large groups of enemies when you could separate them out into smaller chunks isn’t a good idea if you care about your teammates. And you do care, don’t you?
Strength
Strength is the primary skill of the Warrior, and thus isn’t available to characters that take Warrior as a secondary class. Each point allocated here will allow your weapon strikes to ignore one percent of your opponent’s armor, and will also affect some of the appropriately strength-requiring skills, such as Power Attack.
Swordsmanship
Swordsmanship increases the damage you deal with swords, and also increases the likelihood of striking for a critical hit when you do land a blow with a sword. It’ll also increase the efficacy of your sword-based skills, like Sever Artery and Gash. Swords are exclusively one-handed, and deal less damage than hammers, but can be used with a shield.
Axe Mastery
Axe Mastery focuses around the art of wielding axes, increasing the damage from those weapons and upping the likelihood of a critical hit. Axes are generally going to have the lowest normal damage of melee weapons, and will rely on their adrenaline skills to compensate for this.
Hammer Mastery
Hammer Mastery, like the other two weapons-based skills, will boost the damage and critical chance of hammers. Hammers are always going to be two-handed, meaning that you’ll have to forgo the use of a shield while dealing damage, but you’re going to get higher damage in return.
Tactics
Tactics increases the efficacy of a Warrior’s Shouts and other support abilities. Shouts are primarily used to give a short-lived buff to the entire party at the cost of adrenaline or Energy, although some shouts will only work on the Warrior that casts them.
Monk
Monks often fit into the healing archetype that’s such an integral part of any party-based online combat system, and indeed can fulfill this role quite well; Monks are often going to be a required component in any cooperative mission, since they can quickly and ably heal teammates to counter the effects of incoming damage.
In addition to pure healing skills, though, of which there are many, Monks can also use Smiting magic and Protection spells. Smiting magic is often going to be a Monk’s sole offensive ability; these skills will usually deal Holy damage to enemies, which is especially handy against undead foes, which take double damage from Holy spells. You won’t be dealing as much damage as a good Elementalist in most situations, but you’ll at least have something to whip out when all of your teammates are well-healed. Protection spells are generally going to be buffs, in that you cast them on your teammates and they get the benefit of your spell, such as increased defense or blocking abilities, for a short duration.
The primary drawback of Monks is their low health total and poor armor, at least in comparison to some of the other, beefier classes, like Rangers and Warriors. Still, with the self-healing abilities of Healing Wave and Orison of Healing, this is rarely a drawback. It’s also somewhat difficult to solo as a pure healing Monk. You can grab a Warrior Henchmen, which are surprisingly durable thanks to their own self-healing capabilities, but you’ll always have a problem with pure damage dealing unless you pick up a good secondary class and allocate some skill points to pumping up damage. Mesmer is a popular secondary choice, as its Domination tree will let you lay down spells that will affect enemies over time without overly taxing your energy. You can also go with Elementalism if you wish, but many of the most effective spells there will take a lot of energy, and if you start to fall behind on the healing because you’re going for offensive abilities, you can expect to annoy your (probably dead) teammates a great deal.
Divine Favor
Divine Favor is your primary skill, and is mostly going to be of use to Healing monks. Each point here will result in a blanket three health being restored whenever you cast a spell. For instance, if you have one point in Divine Favor and cast Heal Other on a teammate, they’ll be gained for three health plus whatever Heal Other gave them. If you have five points in Divine Favor, then they’ll gain 15 points of health, plus whatever Heal Other gives them. So it stacks with healing powers, but also works with non-healing abilities like Shielding Hands. Healing / Protection monks will want to emphasize their Healing attribute, but Divine Favor should be close behind.
In addition to adding a blanket healing bonus to your spells, there are also a few skills that are specifically tied to Divine Favor for increasing their effects, but it’s a small and rather unremarkable bunch.
Healing Prayers

The perfect spot for a Monk: back in the back of a group, healing from behind.
The Monk is the only class in the game that can heal other players in the party, save for some very limited abilities of the Necromancer and the Ranger; all classes get some way to heal themselves, but when you want a real healer, you’re going to pick a Monk to round out the ranks of your party. Most Monks will, indeed, probably want to specialize in Healing prayers, as healing monks are in great demand for partying, especially when you get up to around Piken Square or so. The more points you put into your Healing attribute, the more effective your spells will be – it’s as simple as that.
Smiting Prayers
The Smiting attribute is the school of offensive power for Monks, and mostly focuses around causing Holy damage to foes. Holy damage is a useful tool, especially when dealing with ghosts and the Undead that start popping up later in the game, but the sad fact of it is that most Monks aren’t going to be chosen for their offensive prowess, and if you advertise yourself as a smiting Monk, you’ll rarely be chosen in front of a Monk that can actually heal worth a damn, except perhaps when you start dealing with the Undead. Investing heavily in Smiting will prevent you from becoming too good at Healing, which is what most parties desire, although it will make you a bit more feasible while soloing.
Protection Prayers
Protection prayers are focused on preventing damage from reaching your allies and removing negative effects and hexes from them. There are some pretty neat spells in here, such as Shielding Hands, which will reduce all of the damage an opponent takes for the next ten seconds, and Vital Blessing, which is an enchantment that will boost a single ally’s maximum health while you maintain it. Shielding Hands alone is probably worth investing a few points into Protection for, as it’s great to cast on a character that’s about to charge into a group of enemies, or that’s getting pounded on too quickly for you to heal them.
Ranger
Almost all of the classes in Guild Wars have access to ranged or magical attacks, and good ones at that, making the Ranger perhaps less of a unique class than the Hunter in World of Warcraft or the Amazon in Diablo II is. But it’s still the only boat to row if you want to use skills that boost your bow attacks, and is also the only class that will let you set traps and tame animals to serve at your side.
One of the distinguishing features of the Ranger is that they can use their bow attacks from a good distance away, further in fact than most spellcasters will be able to hit you from. In party combat, this can make you a valuable puller, as you’ll be able to position yourself behind your warrior, select a target, shout it out, then fire at it to pull it and its group towards you. With some help from a healer, you can easily survive the aggro generation of such a maneuver, and you’ll be able to front-load your damage with things like Precision Shot, Power Shot, and preparation abilities like Apply Poison or Choking Gas, or lay down a trap between you and the opposing enemies and force them to run over it on their way to you.
One thing to remember as a Ranger is that you’re going to be dealing a bit more damage if you’re above your enemies. You gain a damage bonus from having the high ground, which is especially useful in PVP, so do your best to get above your enemies and fire down at them.
A number of professions mesh well with the Ranger. Ranger/Mesmers or Ranger/Necros can be devastating in PVP thanks to their ability to stack poison and health degeneration effects on a single target, or otherwise gimp foes with status effects, while Ranger/Monks offer up a number of support abilities to help your team carry the day in mortal combat.
Expertise
Expertise reduces the overall energy cost of most of your skills, with each extra point in Expertise resulting in a 4% reduction of energy costs for Preparation, Traps, and Attack skills. Note that this benefit doesn’t round up, so you’ll need to pump this enough to get a full energy point reduction in order to see any effect. E.g. an applicable skill that costs 10 Energy won’t get any benefit from two points in Expertise, since this is only an 8% reduction, and thus amounts to less to a point; putting another point in Expertise, however, will result in a 12% reduction, and will thus drop the energy cost of the skill to nine points.
Expertise also affects skills that reduce Energy cost, skill recharge times, and your Ranger’s chance to dodge attacks, such as Practiced Stance, Lightning Reflexes, and Dodge.
Beast Mastery
The Beast Mastery skill tree mostly revolves around buffing your animal companion, increasing its health recovery rate or armor or giving it added offensive capabilities. There are plenty of Call abilities, which generally last for 30 or 60 seconds, allowing you to put them up just before a fight starts and have them last throughout. There are also a number of skills here that affect Rangers themselves, allowing them to adopt the aspect of a certain beast for a short period of time, and which act as short-term self-buffs.
Marksmanship
Marksmanship skills revolve around increasing the efficacy and especially the speed of your bow attacks. Not many of these skills will result in outright damage increases, but many of them will let you fire more quickly, thus letting you pump out more damage per second. A lot of these skills will also let you interrupt enemy actions, forcing them to start casting their spell or performing that action again. Marksmanship rangers can thus be pretty annoying in PVP.
Wilderness Survival
Most of a Ranger’s trap abilities are located in Wilderness Survival, along with the bulk of their Preparation abilities. Traps are great ways to start off fights, as they’ll affect multiple enemies with status effects, as well as causing damage, while Preparation skills will allow you to add damage or an effect to all of your ranged attacks for the next dozen seconds or so.
Elementalist
As in many MMO’s, the Elementalist (read: Mage) in Guild Wars is going to be the heavy damage dealer of the party, with many of the most damaging spells, area-of-effect attacks, and elemental damage. While physically weak, elementalists get large energy reservoirs and plenty of energy restoration to go along with it, enabling them to cast plenty of spells with minimal downtimes.
As the name of the class implies, Elementalists are masters of elemental magic, in this case subdivided into Air, Fire, Earth, and Water. This is something of a drawback, as the four divisions of magic, when added to the Energy Storage primary power, mean that Elementalists have to choose from five attributes instead of four, thus meaning that each attribute will have somewhat fewer spells available to it than you’d find in other classes. Still, though, each attribute is going to be roughly equivalent to one another, with each having its own strengths and weaknesses.
Like in most games with elemental magic, you’re going to find that some enemies are going to be weaker to some forms of magic than others, especially when the foes you’re facing are themselves constructed out of an element. So, for instance, if you see an Ice Elemental running around, you’d be wise to use Fire magic on it; any Fire spells you use will do double damage. Using Ice magic on an Ice Elemental, however, will result in drastically lower damage than normal. Since it costs an awful lot of points to reach the higher level of an elemental skill, you’re probably going to want to try and specialize as much as you can in a single school of magic, and use your secondary profession to deal damage or otherwise hurt enemies that wind up being resistant to your elemental prowess. You can still realign your attributes when you reach an area where you think it’d be worthwhile to do so, such as by retasking to fire magic when you hit the snowy peaks around Yak’s Bend.
The most popular secondary profession for Elementalists seems to be Mesmerism, with its wide array of support abilities that mesh well with Elementalism. Things like Backfire can be a big help when dealing with spellcasters, since it’ll harm them each time they cast a spell, while Phantasm can add some straight bleeding to their rear ends. Domination Mesmers can especially be nice, since they’re quick to cast and affect an enemy for a few seconds at a time. Monking can also be popular so that you can act as a secondary healer when needed, but you need to be careful not to spend too much energy on healing; most of what you want to be doing in combat is casting spells.
Energy Storage
Energy Storage is going to be a great skill to invest in, especially over the first few points, as each point will net you an extra three maximum energy. There are a lot of classes that would die for this kind of simple boon, but the Elementalist is arguably the one in most need of it, since they have the most expensive spells and need to cast spells to fulfill their role as a damage dealer. Some spells require upwards of 40 energy to cast, so you’ll probably need a couple of points in Energy Storage just to use them, barring excellent equipment upgrades.
Fire Magic

A good fire Elementalist is a valuable asset in any battle.
Fire magic is obviously going to be best used against ice and snow creatures, but can be devastating against almost any enemy you face. Fire has a good mixture of single-target and area-of-effect spells, and can often set enemies on fire, resulting in extra damage over time. It is, however, an expensive school of magic, with many skills that cost 15 or 25 energy at a go.
Water Magic
Water magic incorporates both water and ice magics, resulting in a school that emphasizes slowing enemies and protecting you from harm. The damage here isn’t as great as Fire magics are, but there are some noticeably good spells, such as Blurred Vision, which can cause all enemies in a group to miss with 50% of their attacks for 10-20 seconds. This is a great spell to open a fight with.
Earth Magic
Earth Magic focuses on knocking enemies down, and is especially useful for damaging enemies close to the caster and for increasing your resistance to physical attacks. Although it doesn’t have quite as much offensive prowess as something like Fire does, Earth is notable for the relative cheapness of its spells, with most coming in at 10 energy or so.
Air Magic
Air magic doesn’t have a particular effect associated with it; many of the spells just do good solid damage and leave it at that. It’s also generally going to be the cheapest school of magic to specialize in, with only one 25-energy spell and no 40′s at all.
Mesmer
Mesmers are manipulators, not focused on dealing outright damage, but rather with throwing out status ailments and twisting the efforts of their enemies back on themselves. It isn’t an exceedingly popular choice as a primary profession, but is quite often seen backing up primary monks and elementalists on their journeys.
Mesmers have a bevy of manipulative spells at their disposal, and are especially useful at negating the powers of enemy spellcasters or at manipulating the raw energy of foes so that they can’t access their skills and spells. There aren’t a great number of super-awesome-DragonBallZ offensive powers here, but with practice, you can be quite annoying in combat.
As a Mesmer, you’re going to want to pack along another spell-casting secondary class, such as Monk or Elementalist, to compensate for your lack of a purely defined role. Your Fast Casting attribute can supplement these abilities by allowing you to pump out damage or healing spells more quickly than primary Monks or Elementalists would be able to. Mesmer/Necros are especially deadly when dealing with single targets, as Conjure Phantasm combined with something like Blood Siphon or Faintheartedness can stack for massive health degeneration for a short duration, forcing enemy healers to work overtime to counteract the effects.
Oddly enough, although Mesmers is one of the least utile classes in PVE play, a well-played Mesmer can be devastating in PVP combat. If you can get close enough to your foes to cast a well-timed Chaos Storm or Backfire on their primary casters or Monks, you can shut them down for a good amount of time, or force them to cease casting until they can remove your hex. The tough part is going to be getting close enough to the back lines of your enemies to cast your stuff, since it’ll typically be the warriors going in headfirst. Try to have your target lined up before the melee begins, though, and just run through the fight to cast your hexes; mesmers are usually a low-priority target for the opposing team, so you won’t likely be getting hit too often.
Fast Casting
Fast Casting is the Mesmer’s primary skill, and, well, lets you cast your skills a bit more quickly than you would otherwise. This skill doesn’t list a set percentage bonus for casting times, so it’s difficult to gauge its precise effect, and it’s also difficult to know whether it rounds up or down, which is important for spells that already have a short casting time. Anyway, dump points here if you’re looking to put more magic in the air, but be careful not to cast too fast or you’ll run out of energy.
Domination
Domination mostly focuses on harrassing and interrupting enemy spellcasters. There are a number of powerful spells in this category, with two of our favorites being Backfire and Chaos Storm. Backfire is a single-target spell that hexes a single spellcaster for ten seconds; whenever that character casts a spell during that timeframe, he or she will take damage. If you pump up your Domination stat almost all the way, you can bump the damage up to over 100 points per spell, which is sometimes enough to kill enemies outright if they’re not careful. This is especially useful on enemy Monks in PVP, since they have to constantly cast healing spells on everyone else. They’ll either have to stop healing their teammates, or waste their energy on healing themselves.
Chaos Storm is another damaging spell, but one that affects a character and the area around them. In PVE play, you’ll often come up against masses of enemies that stick close together; a Chaos Storm cast on one of them will deal a bit of damage every second for ten seconds to all enemies near your target, and also drain energy from spellcasting enemies when they cast a spell. Although you need to have a large number of attribute points in Domination to drain more than a couple points of energy with each hit, Chaos Storm is still pretty useful at any stage, as it’ll cause your enemies to both take damage and lose energy.
If you’re looking for a more straightforward version of Chaos Storm, you may want to try out Energy Burn. This skill starts out by draining your foe for 5 energy and dealing eight times that amount in health damage, but you can up the amount of energy lost by, again, increasing your Domination stat.
Illusion
Illusion magic is mostly intended to affect your opponent’s minds, mostly by disrupting their attacks and throwing out numerous other status effects. There are some damage spells in here, mostly of the “target players loses X health per second” variety.
Inspiration
Inspiration skills typically revolve around the manipulation of energy, mostly by stealing the energy of enemies and transferring it to yourself, or adding energy cost to normal actions, such as attacking. Some of the skills here also revolve around manipulating the enchantments of enemy spellcasters, such as by removing them from the targets, allowing you to eliminate the buffs on certain characters.
Necromancer
Necromancers are the dark magicians of Guild Wars, focused on manipulating the powers of blood and death to their own nefarious ends. Strong necromancers can be a mighty asset to a party, as they have the ability to summon armies of mindless drones to distract foes and can convert bodies into extra health regeneration, or sacrifice their own life for added benefits. They also have plenty of skills revolving around the transferance of conditions, such as Bleeding or Deep Wounds, allowing them to transfer negative effects on themselves over to enemies.

A Death Magic Necromancer can pop up plenty of Bone Horrors to help a group in PVE.
Necromancers function as something of indirect damage dealers in PVE combat, with a number of support abilities that can help your entire party. Since they don’t have an overwhelming number of direct damage spells, many Necromancers choose to take on Warrior as a secondary profession and use melee weapons in combat, relying on Blood Magic abilities to restore their health and afflict their enemies. Although this archetype is fairly common, many players also love grouping with Death Magic Necromancers, especially when you’re questing in areas with large numbers of flesh targets, such as evil dwarves and Charr. Death Magicians can raise armies of the undead from corpses, which will take gradual damage until they die, but which will reduce the pressure on your healers and front-line troops by giving your enemies a number of essentially meaningless targets to beat on.
In PVP, the Necromancer’s role is somewhat different. Since you can’t rely on a steady stream of corpses, corpse-affecting spells are vastly reduced in effectiveness. However, you should have plenty of Blood Magic and Curse effects to spread the horror with; things like Faintheartedness, Enfeebling Blood, Shadow of Fear, and the like can all greatly reduce the effectiveness of specific enemies or enemy groups. And although you won’t be able to raise undead armies, you may wish to examine the Well powers, such as Well of Suffering or Well of Blood. While you do need to kill an enemy before you can use these spells, they can effect drastic shifts in the balance of power, either by giving all of your teammates a good deal of health regeneration for around ten seconds or by afflicting all of your enemies with health degeneration. Also, don’t overlook the spells that strip enemies of Enchantments, such as Chilblains and Strip Enchantment; most Warrior/Monks will be laying down Retribution or Mending on themselves which you’ll be happy to be rid of, and you’ll also be able to strip away a Monk’s Healing Breeze if you’re quick.
As mentioned, many Necromancers in the game take Warrior as a secondary profession, although this is far from a consensus choice. Necro/Elementalist and Necro/Mesmer are also popular choices, with Necro/Ranger and Necro/Monk being somewhat less common. With Soul Reaping, though, you should be able to fuel most spellcasting classes with the energy that you steal from enemies, so energy conservation isn’t quite as pressing an issue as it is for, say, a primary Mesmer.
Soul Reaping
For each point you put into Soul Reaping, you’ll gain one energy when a nearby enemy dies. Pretty handy, that, especially in large-scale PVE battles where you’ll be mowing down enemies quickly. It’s not quite as useful in PVP combat, though, where kills are going to obtained only after long slogs of fighting, and where your victory is usually almost assured after the first couple of kills, making the extra energy gained less than necessary.
Curses
Curses is a good support attribute for PVP players, as you’ll be able to harry your opponents with slowing, interruptions, Hexes, and all kinds of nasty stuff like that. A number of the spells here will reduce the effectiveness of healing magic cast on your target for a period of time, allowing you to plop them down on an enemy warrior and go to town – just be sure your teammates know who you’re casting on so that they can all target him or her.
Blood Magic
Blood Magic often involves some kind of sacrifice of the Necromancer’s health to effect some kind of change on the target. A good early spell that Necrowarriors and Warrior/Necros will want to boost is Blood Renewal, which forces you to sacrifice 33% of your health, then nets you three health regeneration for ten seconds and a large health gain at the end of the spell. If you can get a Monk to cast Healing Breeze on you while you cast this spell, you’ll be able to charge in with as much as 10 or 11 health regeneration, making you virtually undamagable for 10 seconds. Generally, though, it’s best to cast it before combat, then take advantage of the regeneration to charge into combat and start swinging away.
If you happen to have access to them, Well of Blood and especially Well of Power (an elite skill) are great in PVP, since they’ll let your teammates sit inside the radius of their effects and gain regeneration for 10 seconds. They don’t affect your enemies, and these effects can’t be dispelled. Just be sure to let your party members know that you’re casting them!
For PVP, you might also want to try using Spinal Shivers on critical enemies, like healing Monks. It will cause your target to be interrupted when hit by cold damage for a good length of time, up to 30 seconds. If you pair this with a wand that deals cold damage, it’s conceivable that you could prevent an enemy from casting any spells for the duration of the effect, although you yourself would of course be almost useless to your team for the duration of this effect.
Death Magic
Death Magic, as previously mentioned, mostly revolves around the conversion of corpses into usable energy or effects, or with the maintenance of undead allies that you’ve raised. It can be useful in PVP, but you won’t be able to rely on the undead armies of PVE; instead, you’ll be using Death Magic for things like Soul Feast, Putrid Explosion, and Deadly Swarm. In PVE, though, undead masters are a great boon to a team, at least in areas where you can actually raise undead minions. Although they’ll take damage over time and eventually die if you don’t quickly move from enemy to enemy, they still confuse the enemies in the game and cause them to cease attacking the actual members of your team.

Getting Started
When you first step into the world of Tyria, it’ll probably take you a little while to get used to the somewhat odd way the game is set up, especially if you’re attempting to shift over from a “pure” MMO game like World of Warcraft. Things are a little bit different in Guild Wars, mostly in the sense of things being multiplayer, but much less massive. It’s really more akin to Diablo II than anything else, if you happened to play that game, save that the numerous chat channels are incorporated right into the game itself in the form of the towns. Like Diablo II, it’s going to be rare to play with more than a few other people at a time; only in the cities will you meet up with other players and attempt to group up for missions. When you do head out on a mission, the game will create a special zone for you and your party members (or just yourself if you’re playing solo) that will only features enemies in it; no other players outside your group will be able to access it. Thus, your chances of happening across a fellow player out of town and striking up a group will be nil, but likewise, you’re never going to be killed by some griefer who happens to enjoy taking advantage of the weakness of others.
In essence, though, Guild Wars does play a lot like an MMO, or any other type of RPG, since it has skill sets, classes, equipment upgrades, quests; all the trappings of a traditional RPG experience are here. Getting used to the game’s unique mechanics can be a bit daunting, but with a little time under your belt, you should pick up the pace pretty quickly. For those of you who are brand-new to this type of genre, though, we’re going to give you some tips to help get you started in Ascalon.
After Character Creation
After you’ve made a new character and sit through the opening cutscene, you’ll be deposited into Ascalon City, one of the capitals of Tyria. The storyline elements of the game are summed up by the cutscenes you’ll witness as you take quests, as well as in the opening cutscene, so if you’re interested in learning more about what’s happening in Tyria, play close attention; the manual also has a bunch of fiction for the game if you want to read that.

There’s always time to dance nude in Ascalon. Use the /dance command in a chat window to start the boogie.
Anyway, here you are standing around in town. You’ll notice that one of the characters in front of you, the Town Cryer, has a green arrow over his head; this indicates that he has a quest for you. If you talk to him (by left-clicking on him) and accept the quest that he gives, called “Message For a Friend,” it’ll be entered into your quest log, which you can check by hitting L. This is a simple quest; all you have to do to complete it is cross the bridge to your north and speak to Sir Tydus, who likewise has a green arrow above his head (which can also indicate that a character can give you a reward for completing a quest), you’ll complete the initial quest and earn your reward, netting you a little gold and experience. You’re off to a good start!
After you talk to Sir Tydus, he’ll offer you another quest right off the bat. This quest, “War Preparations,” will involve you leaving town, so go ahead and do so. You’re likely going to see a lot of other players in the town square on your way out, but don’t worry about them yet; just walk down the ramp and into the large, glowing, white exit points on your left.
Adventuring and Earning Skills
When you leave town, you’ll see a short loading screen, and you’ll wind up in Lakeside County, an idyllic little area that’s devoid of any serious threats to you. Immediately outside the gates should be Gwen, a young girl, and your first quest trainer, the name of whom will change based on your chosen profession. Your trainer will definitely have a quest for you, and if Gwen’s there, she might have a quest for you as well. (One of the classes, Monks if we recall, actually have a quest to help rescue Gwen, who’s been trapped by monsters nearby, so she won’t be there for those players.)
Speak to your trainer first off. They’ll give you a simple quest to perform, after which they’ll reward you your first two skills. As you accept this quest, you’ll notice a little flair on your compass, in the upper right-hand corner of the screen, which resolves itself into a small green arrow in the corner of your mini-map; this is going to point you towards your quest objective. (If you missed the quest text, you can find it in your quest log and read it again.)
Now, most of these starting quests are going to involve killing Skale, which are goblin-like fish creatures that dwell near the river to the south of your location. Head there and start taking down Skale, then; you should be able to handily defeat them with your starting weapons. Most of these enemies won’t attack you unless you attack first, so you’ll be able to handily avoid combat if you just want to run past them, but you should definitely kill a few of them for experience and to gain some items. All you have to do to attack an enemy is left-click on it; if you want to get a little more complicated, you can use Tab to cycle through nearby enemies, then hit Space when you see a likely target. River Skale Tads are going to be your most likely target here, as they’re level 0 and will be able to take only a few hits before keeling over dead.

You’re going to have plenty of time to practice on the easy enemies before the Searing before moving on to the real challenges in the game.
Most enemies in the game will drop some kind of item when killed, and these Skales are no exception. While enemies never drop usable armor, you may find weapons that are an upgrade over what you were initially given. To check your equipment, hit I and move your mouse over the weapon in your weapon slot; most of them will do something like 3-5 damage. If you’re using a one-handed weapon, like a sword or a cane, you’ll be able to equip another item in the shield slot below it. Warriors will want to put an actual shield here, while spellcasters will want to equip some kind of item that gives you extra energy, such as a chakra or an icon. Pop your inventory whenever you pick up an item and see if it isn’t something you can equip. (Note that many of the Skale will drop Skale Fins; be sure to pick these up.) If any of the items that drop have blue names, hold onto them; these are magical items. You’ll need an Identification Kit to identify them, but you’ll be able to get one of those later on.
When you’ve completed your initial quest given to you by your trainer, return to him or her for your quest reward. You can check on whether or not you’re done by examining the quest in your quest log; underneath the Quest Summary, you should see your objectives scratched out with the line “Return to (trainer) for your reward” entered in beneath it. With that done, return back to the gates of Ascalon City and talk to your trainer again; they’ll give you your first two skills in your primary profession. After that’s done, your trainer will return to the city, leaving Haversan in their place. Haversdan should have a couple of new quests for you, so pick those up.
Skills
Now that you have a couple of skills under your belt, we might explain what these do. Skills are essentially your spells; all classes have them, and all of them will need to use them in combat for maximum effectiveness.
You can collect an incredible number of skills in your travels, with most of them coming as quest rewards, just like you earned these two. You can only use eight skills at a time, though, and you won’t be able to change these eight skills during a mission. If you have more than eight skills (and it won’t take you long to acquire more than that), you’ll need to pick them while in town. You can open your skills menu by hitting K, and if you’re in town, you’ll be able to drag and drop skills onto your skill bar (at the bottom of the screen) to select the eight that you want to use.
If you want to obtain more skills for your character, then Haversdan should have given you a quest called “A New Ranger Trainer” or “A New Warrior Trainer” or whatever. If you follow the arrow given to you on your map (which will likely lead you outside of Lakeside County), you’ll eventually find another trainer for your profession, who’ll give you more quests and more skills. Yay! The more skills you have, the more flexible you’ll be in combat.
Note that most skills will have green numbers in their descriptions, which you can check in the Skills menu or by running your mouse over the skills on your skill bar. These indicate variables, or numbers which can be increased or reduced by allocating attribute points to your various attributes. Don’t worry about them yet; instead, just keep adventuring for the moment and we’ll discuss attributes later on.
Merchants
Now, if you return to Ascalon City, we’ll talk about the merchant characters you’ll encounter there. There are three types of merchants here: general merchants, weapons merchants, and crafters.
General Merchants are given the tag [Merchant], and can be found in pretty much every town in the game. These guys will sell you items, the most important of which are the identification kit and salvage kit. Both of these are described in detail in our Items chapter above, but to sum up: ID kits will let you identify magical items that drop, while salvage kits will let you break down junk items into useful crafting items that you can bring to a crafter to make more powerful equipment.
At the beginning of the game, though, the most important role of the merchant will be as a buyer; you can sell almost anything to him, and although he won’t pay you much more than five gold for most of the stuff you’re going to be finding in the early game, but since you start out with virtually no cash, every little bit will help, and indeed you’ll be finding enough junk items in the game so that the small amounts of cash you earn from item sales will definitely add up.
Weapons Merchants won’t be fully usable for a good long while. At the outset of the game, all they can really do is customize your weapons for you, which adds +20% damage to the weapon at the low cost of ten gold. This is worthwhile in and of itself (although it does prevent you from giving the weapon to another character for them to use), but later in the game, you’ll be able to add custom parts to your weapon to upgrade it further. For now, though, return to the Weapons vendor whenever you get a new weapon and customize it for the extra damage.

The crafter in Ascalon offers terrible merchandise. Save your crafting items until after the Searing.
Crafters are similar to weapons merchants in that they won’t be tremendously useful until later in the game. Again, these are explained in greater detail in the Items chapter above, but for now, suffice to say that you can bring crafting items to these guys and have them convert them into better equipment. Most of the equipment that you can earn in Ascalon is barely worth making, though, so you’re better off not salvaging equipment, and instead just selling everything you can for cash at this point in the game.
Choosing a Secondary Profession
Now, at this point you can start exploring the countryside. If you wish, you can track down the next trainer for your profession, or attempt to earn a secondary profession. You’re going to need to earn a secondary profession before you can leave this first part of the game, so you’re going to want to start thinking about what you want to pick.
Luckily for you, you can feel free to try out multiple professions before settling down and picking one. When you find a secondary profession trainer, of which there’ll be five (one for each profession except your primary profession), they’ll give you a task to perform and loan you some of the skills of that class, which you can keep and try out while you’re on the quest that they give. In most cases, you’re going to be forced to use the skills that they’ve given you in order to pass through whatever quest that you’re tasked with. For instance, the Monk trainer will give you a healing spell, and then ask you to escort a guard through some poisonous water in the catacombs while he retrieves a sacred object. While he’s running through the water, you’ll need to heal both him and yourself, or you’ll die.
Anyway, if you wish, you can feel free to track down the secondary trainers and partake of their quests at no real risk. Each of their quests will net you 250 experience. After you complete their initial quest, you can return to them for the experience reward; they’ll then ask you if you wish to permanently take on their class as a secondary profession. This is a permanent choice and cannot be changed, ever. If you’re hesitant to commit to the secondary profession, just turn them down; you’ll keep the temporary skills you were given until you do another class’s beginning quest. If you want to take up the profession later on, you can simply return to the trainer again and accept the burden at that point.
Mesmer: Lady Althea, at the Actor’s Stage just outside of Ascalon City, will ask you to track down and kill a rogue bull. Find it on your map (it’s quite close to her) and use Conjure Phantasm to off it. You’ll need to use it three or four times; you can’t hurt it very much with physical attacks due to its high armor.
Monk: Brother Mhenlo resides in Ashford Abbey, a town that lies at the end of the road leading southwest from Ascalon City. If you accept his quest, you’ll be asked to escort an Abbey guard into the catacombs in order to retrieve an artifact. The only catch is that there’s poisonous water between you and your goal, so you’ll need to keep using your healing powers on yourself and the monk if you wish to stay alive.

After you nab an animal friend, you’ll be able to bring it along on adventures, and hug it and love it and squeeze it forever.
Ranger: If you’re interested in ranging, then you’ll have to head to Regent Valley to meet up with Master Ranger Nente, who’ll instruct you on the art of obtaining a pet companion. To do so, head to the Melandru statue noted on your map, then use the Charm Animal skill on one of the Melandru Stalkers there to bind it to your will. With that done, return to Nente to become a full-fledged Ranger.
Elementalism: The secondary trainer for Elementalism is difficult to find. Aziure is going to be found near the tower in Wizard’s Folly, which is a zone found to the south of Ashford Abbey. If you happen to have picked up the quest “The Wayward Wizard” in Ascalon City, then that can be used to make your way down to the town of Foible’s Fair, which is right near the border between the lush greenlands and the snowy mountains to the south. The tower you’re looking for is actually in the mountains, to the southwest of Foible’s Fair, and is going to be guarded by level three Ice Elementals, so you may want to bring along a teammate or wait until you’ve gained a couple of levels before heading out.
When you meet up with Elementalist Aziure, she’ll ask you to protect her while she performs some magical ritual thingamabob. She’ll give you a few spells, including Glyph of Lesser Energy and Fire Storm. The basic idea here is to wait for the Ice Elementals that appear to gather around Aziure, then use the Glyph, then use Fire Storm to pound away at the Elementals. They’ll take double damage from the Fire Storm, so it should be able to kill them all relatively easily. While you’re waiting for it to recharge, attack them with normal spells or attacks, and be sure to stay above the 15 energy needed to cast Fire Storm again. When all the Elementals are dead, you can speak to Aziure again to take on Elementalist as a side profession, if you wish.
Necromancer: Necromancer Munne is found just inside the Catacombs, the entrance to which is inside Ashford Abbey. In order to complete her task, you’ll need to use the Animate Bone Horror skill which she gives you to create zombie-like creatures to do your bidding. She wants you to enter the tomb and kill a Nightmare that has been created within, but the path leading to it is blocked off by a number of flame traps. If you enter one of these flame traps, you’ll die, so instead, walk up to the edge of the trap and use the Bone Horror spell to summon a Horror; they’ll usually be summoned within the flame traps, and thus set them off, freeing you to pass by. The Nightmare is level four, but shouldn’t be too difficult to kill if you’re above level two or so and have some manner of healing yourself.
Warrior: To train as a secondary Warrior, talk to Warmaster Grast in Green Hills County, which you can find by following the road leading west out of Ascalon City. He’ll give you some sword skills, as well as a starter sword, and ask you to kill six Grall Invaders that have taken up position on the roads to the southwest. Do so, then return to him to become a full-fledged warrior, if you wish.
Keep Questing!
After you’ve gotten used to how the game plays, you’ll probably still have a bunch of unfinished quests in your logbook. At this point you’ll probably want to go out and do as many of them as you can – each of them will be worth 250 or 500 experience, and most of them will be easily soloable, except maybe for pure healing monks. Each quest may not add a significant amount to your level bar, but getting as much of the experience here before bumping yourself to post-Searing Ascalon will make the going a lot easier for you as opposed to people who leave at the minimum required level.
Moving On
When you think you’ve expended as much energy as you’re willing to do so in Ascalon and its surroundings, it’s time to move on to the next phase of the game. To do so, return to Ascalon City and talk to Tydus, by the gates to the Ascalon Academy. In order to get past him, you’ll need to be at least level three and have two professions, but you’re well advised to wait until you’re at least level five to move on, and the higher the better. You should be able to get up to level seven or eight by doing all of the quests here, which will make for an easier time after the Searing. Keep in mind, again, that this is a permanent change, and that you won’t be able to return to the Ascalon you know once you accept Tydus’ mission.

The first PVP battle in the game is usually a lopsided affair, so prepare to either destroy or be destroyed.
Anyway, the first task Tydus will give you will involve a quick PVP battle, which is somewhat jarring and confusing, since it arrives without any context whatsoever. Apparently each team here is asked to kill the other time; the first team to record nine kills or so will win the battle. Winning or losing has no real effect on you, though, so don’t worry about this part of the mission overmuch.
After the PVP battle, your team of completely random individuals (which the server selects for you; you can’t choose players to join, apparently, although you may try talking to Tydus while you’re in a group and see if that works), you’ll have to fight your way through a cave full of Charr and kill their leader. You’ll have plenty of NPC helpers here, so you shouldn’t have any problems dropping the beasts. When that’s done, you’ll get a rather interesting cutscene that will propel your character two years into the future, into post-Searing Ascalon.
Post-Searing Ascalon
Ascalon after the Searing is a much different beast than the world you knew beforehand. There are a number of new features waiting for you, just in Ascalon City itself, such as Henchmen, materials traders, and other new vendors, such as the skill vendor. The biggest change in post-Searing Ascalon is the inclusion of story-driven Cooperative missions and PVP-based Competitive missions.
Finding a Party
So far as the general game mechanics go, you’ll find that it’s not really possible to just run out into the world and kill monsters by yourself anymore. There are more monsters running around between the towns, and they’re more difficult to kill, so if you go out all by your lonesome you’re going to have a difficult go of it. Henchmen can help finish off some of these quests, but you’re probably going to want to team up with real players for the more difficult ones.

A good party makes the post-Ascalon quests much easier to manage.
The first and probably best way to find good people to group with is to join a guild. There are plenty of guilds running around spamming invites in Ascalon City most of the time, so if you’re just looking for a random guild to join, it’s not too difficult to find one. It might be better, though, to make a guild with friends, either from real life or people you know online, and then schedule times to get together and do your quests. Or, if your guild is sufficiently large, you should be able to find people online whenever you need help. Just be sure to help out people of lower level than you, or you’ll find your own requests for assistance falling on deaf ears.
Another way to polish off quests is to ask for teammates in the general chat of the town nearest to where the quest is resolved. It’s best to ask for teammates for a specific quest, rather than typing out all of the quests you have into the chat window and hoping for tells. Since you can’t link or share quests, it’s just easier to manage if you get strike teams together for one quest, or for all the quests in a zone, then head back to town for your rewards and to sell the loot that you picked up.
Using Henchmen
Henchmen can be fantastic tools to finish off old quests that you never managed to get around to doing, but their weakness lies in their being just that: tools. They’re not particularly brilliant, can’t adapt as quickly as human players can, and won’t be able to bring all the unique skills that a human player might. That said, they still work well enough for dealing with most of the random 500-experience quests that you’ll come across after you pass through the Searing, so long as you don’t expect them to fight all of your battles for you.
You can hire henchmen in any post-Searing town by finding them in the city (they’re always grouped together, so look for four or more green dots clumped around each other), then clicking on them and clicking on the green plus sign in your party window. You can fill out a whole party with henchmen, if you wish, or you can just hire one or two to come along with you.

Henchmen aren’t brilliant, but they can definitely help you polish off some of the easier quests in the game.
Henchmen affect you as would the presence of other real players: experience is split between yourself and them, as is gold, and they’ll also prevent you from obtaining massive amounts of items. Instead of items dropping and being “claimed” by your henchmen, though, as they would be for real players, they just won’t drop. On the plus side, though, all items that do drop will be available for you to pick up.
Luckily, henchmen are bright enough to team up on the same target, so when you pick a target and fire on it, you can expect all of your henchmen to go for the same enemy. (Note that this is sometimes beyond even the abilities of human players…) You can use this concentration of fire to go through your targets in an orderly fashion, taking down enemy healers first, then going for the big guns.
One thing that henchmen are poor at is defending themselves; this isn’t because they’re not aggressive enough, but rather because they’re sometimes too aggressive, especially in the case of enemies that can’t really be hit. This is mostly a nuisance in areas where enemies are above or below you, such as when you cross a bridge or come up to a cliff; the enemies will notice you when you come within their aggro radius, then start using ranged attacks and spells on you, forcing your henchmen to try and find a (usually non-existant) path to the enemies, thus confusing them and diffusing your party. Sometimes you can force them to follow you by just moving ahead, but this is still pretty annoying.
Use Party Targeting
One of the most exasperating aspects of partying with real live humans is the way that very few people, at least in this early portion of the game’s history, know how to use the game’s auto-targeting system to combine their fire on one target. If you have six people in your party and are trying to take on an opposing group of eight enemies, then you need to have all of your party members targeting the same target. If you do so, you can kill individual enemies in seconds, then move on to the next target, and so on. If, on the other hand, each member of your party is aiming at their own separate targets, then it’ll take you much, much longer to kill things, and you stand a greater chance of seeing your targets get healing from an enemy spellcaster. This isn’t a game of niceties: gang up on a single target, kill it, then move on to the next.
The real bummer about most people’s inability or refusal to use targeting is that it’s incredibly easy to put it to use. All you need to do is select one person in your party to be the designated targeter. This is usually going to be one of your Warriors, since they’ll be in the thick of things and will be able to cycle through targets quickly and will hopefully be able to go for any targets of interest, such as healers or spellcasters. When your targeter has a target lined up, they can let everyone else in the party know who they’re targeting by hitting Ctrl – Space. This will result in a shout in the Team channel (e.g. “St. Augustine: I’m attacking Whiptail Devourer!”) and will pop up a little targeting icon by the name of the targeter in the Party window.

Good party targetting makes coordinating your attacks in PVP much easier.
Now, when you see that your targeter has selected a target and has shouted it out, all you have to do to combine your firepower on that target is hit T, and you’ll automatically target it and open fire with your bow or staff or melee weapon. See? That’s easy, isn’t it? Trust us when we say that proper use of targeting will greatly increase your efficiency in party-based combat, by channeling the firepower of your entire team onto one target. Without party targeting, your party’s damage will be diffused throughout a group of enemies, thus resulting in longer fights and a greater chance that your casters will run out of energy. And that’s not a good thing.
Of course, you don’t always have to use party targeting. Elementalists and other classes with area-of-effect powers might want to switch away from the targeted enemy when using an area-of-effect spell. For instance, if your warrior has targeted an enemy warrior-type foe that he’s going toe-to-toe with, while a larger group of enemies is clustered together behind him, you may want to bust out with your Fire Storm or Chaos Storm on the tighter group of enemies, since you’ll be doing more net damage with those spells back there. Just be sure to switch back to the primary target when you start chucking out energy balls from your weapon.
Obtaining New Skills
One of the primary reasons for playing the PVE game is to acquire new skills which will let you dominate the battlefield when you finally reach level 20 and start to play PVP games against other high-level players. As you travel, then, you’ll want to obtain as many new skills as possible, and there are a few diffeent ways to do so.
Quests: As in pre-Searing Ascalon, many of the skills that you’re going to be obtaining will be available as the result of questing. Get every quest you possibly can, then, and check their quest descriptions to see if they’re going to result in any new skills for your character; different classes will get skill rewards for different quests, depending on the profession of the character that gives the quest. The bulk of your skills will be coming as a result of questing, so be sure to be extra careful to check each quest for new skills listed among the rewards, and do them as soon as you’re able to.
Skill Vendors: Many towns feature NPCs that sell skills to you. In order to obtain them, you’ll need to give them gold, as well as relinquish a Skill Point. Skill Points are earned by obtaining experience, but only very slowly; you also gain them as a resulting of completing the many Cooperative Missions in the game. The important thing to remember about skill vendors is that skills will become more expensive to buy as you buy more of them; the first costs 10 gold, the second costs 20, and so on, until you find yourself paying hundreds of gold for each skill. Skill points themselves are fairly scarce over the life of a character, so don’t bother buying every skill available to you at a vendor, unless you’re a completionist. Rather, it’s best to just purchase the ones you’re absolutely sure that you’re going to use on a regular basis, and leave the rest behind to ensure that you’ll have enough gold and skill points to buy the critical skills later on.
Signet of Capture: The Signet of Capture can be bought from skill vendors in Quarrel Falls and the Henge of Denravi, and can be used to obtain skills directly from enemies. In order to use it, you’ll have to equip it as a normal skill, then find a boss creature that’s using a skill from one of your two professions. After the boss uses a skill that you’d like to obtain, click on the Signet of Capture to steal the skill from the boss; at this point, the Signet will be removed from your skill bar (permanently) and replaced by the stolen skill. You can cancel this capturing procedure if you click on the Signet again, if you find that you’re capturing something you don’t really care for.
The Signet of Capture is unique because it will let you access Elite skills. Elite skills are rare skills that are almost exclusively available through the Signet of Capture. They’re not always incredible improvements over the common skills that you’ll run across, but in most cases they will be upgrades, so if you’re interested in getting the upper hand in PVP you’ll definitely want to try and track them down.
Cooperative Missions
There are a number of Cooperative Missions in post-Searing Ascalon, starting at the Great Northern Wall, which is adjacent to Ascalon City itself. Cooperative missions will require a group of four to eight players to complete, and will usually take anywhere from half an hour to an hour of time. This are objective-based missions, much like the ones ordinarily given to you by NPCs, but a bit more in-depth and detailed. The rewards are greater, as well, with each mission being worth 1,000 experience and a single skill point, which you can use at a skill vendor to purchase new abilities. In addition to the main quest, each cooperative mission will have a Bonus quest associated with it. Finishing the Bonus quest will net you another 1,000 experience, so it’s well worth the time to track them down and finish them off.
The best thing about cooperative missions is that they’ll often end by warping your party to a new town, and sometimes right to the next cooperative mission zone.
We’re not going to be able to give you details on all of the cooperative missions – most of them are fairly straightforward hack-n-slashes anyway – but we are going to include mini-walkthroughs for the first four missions. Completing all of these will take you to Yak’s Bend, the second major town in post-Searing Ascalon.
The Great Northern Wall
The Great Northern Wall is a fairly straightforward kill mission: all you have to do is cut your swath through a number of foes until you reach an outpost a bit north of the wall. Head left when you hit the tarpit and go up the ramps. You’ll know you’re there when you cut down a Charr boss enemy. When you reach the outpost, the mission automatically ends. Congratulations, you just managed to cause the breach of Ascalon’s defensive wall! Way to go!
Bonus: A ghostly warrior is off on the northern end of the mission map. When you find him, he’ll ask you to bring him four pieces of his armor that were lost long ago so that he can gain passage to the afterworld. These armor pieces are scattered around in Wreckage piles around the map, so be sure to hit them all and prod your teammates to pick up these items when they happen to be reserved for them. You can keep the armor pieces through multiple mission attempts, and apparently all you need are four pieces, not all four separate parts, so eventually you should be able to pull this one off, even if you have to grab all the pieces yourself across multiple missions. It’s not that difficult to do in a single try, though, if you have a decent team.
Fort Ranik

You can use the trebuchets in this area to blast the entire Charr army to pieces.
Fort Ranik is another fairly straightforward mission, where your goal is to push your way through many, many Charr until you reach the armies that have broken through the Northern Wall and into Ascalon, then push them back across the wall or just destroy them outright. Most of this level is hack-and-slash, but when you reach the plain at the end of the mission, you’ll have to reassemble one of the broken trebuchets with parts found from nearby wrecked catapults and use that to destroy the mass of enemies waiting for you. There’s another trebuchet closer to the wall; if you have a hearty Monk or Warrior that doesn’t mind dying for the cause, they can run up to the ramp leading up the wall, grab aggro on all the enemies, then lure them back to the fire near the bottom of the ramp. While the Charr are wailing on your sacrificial lamb, fling the trebuchet at the fire and you should take out the entire group. Since you’re near the end of the mission anyway, you can just res your dead ally (they’ll get killed by the explosion if they’re anywhere near it), run up the ramp, kill any remaining enemies, then end the mission.
Bonus: We recall this as being fairly simple. There’s an NPC trapped in a cage by two Charr Overseers; he’s up a switchback ramp near the canyon that leads to the trebuchet field. You should spot him on your map while you’re running around, so head up the ramp and free him for your bonus experience.
Ruins of Surmia
(Note that Fort Ranik doesn’t take you to the Ruins of Surmia. In order to reach it, you need to leave from the Frontier Gate, walk north across the Wall, then wrap around to the west until you find the mission zone. There is a quest called, oddly enough, Ruins of Surmia which will take you from the first zone to the Ruins. It’s a fairly short walk.)
This is where the missions start becoming fairly lengthy. Most of this mission is fairly straightforward, as Prince Rurik will be around to shephard you towards the many corrals in which the Ascalon soldiers have been penned up. In one of them, you’ll find Erol, who’ll run you up to the ruins of a destroyed castle. While Rurik and Erol wait for your party, you’ll need to run down to the water below and follow the path around to the far side of the moat and kill the enemies there before dropping the drawbridge with the lever by the door. (Feel free to kill the enemies in the area before dropping the bridge, if you want experience and loot.) At that point, the dynamic duo will cross the bridge and hatch a plan to escape from the castle, by freeing more captive mages and using them to open a teleport to the Nolani Academy.
Bonus: The bonus here is given you to by a soldier standing watch over the road near the watery moat, after you guide Runik to the raised bridge; you’ll probably be able to spot him on your map as you’re running around. She’ll ask you to track down some Flame Keepers and kill them. As you get this quest, you’ll notice some Charr walking down behind you. These Ember Bearers may appear to be ripe for the picking, but if you want to successfully complete the mission, you’ll have to just follow them from a distance and wait for them to open a wooden gate across the water. When the gate’s open, charge through, slaughter the Ember Bearers, then track down the Flame Keepers near the temple and slay them for your bonus experience.
Nolani Academy

Rurik can heal himself, so let him do the heavy lifting in most of these fights.
Your initial goal here is to defend the Academy from the siege that it’s under by the Charr. There are two ways to go about doing this. The first is to take the northeastern passage out of the Academy, wrap around to the east, head south, then eventually flank and ambush the Charr outside the gates. This can take a while; if you just want to get on with the mission, you can also choose to just open the gates and let the Charr come in. The mages standing around will deal some damage to them, while Rurik himself is an able distraction. The Charr will come in in waves, so it’s not all that difficult to defeat them if you have good healing.
After the Academy is safe, guide Rurik to the south to the ruins of Rin. He’ll blow a big ol’ horn, which has the Incredible Magical Effect of…making it rain. Yay? Anyway, with the flames of the Charr smited, you’ll be able to sweep into the city relatively unmolested. After you meet up with the King, you’ll end the mission and be on your way to Yak’s Bend, the next major part of the game.
Bonus: The bonus here is acquired by following the northeastern path out of the Academy. There’s a man in a valley to the east of the main road who bears a book; when you talk to him, he’ll give one of your party members the book to carry, and ask you to bring it to the graveyard elsewhere in the level, to the southeast of the Academy, if we recall correctly. You’ll know you’re near it when you spot the Spirit of the Fallen enemies. These lvl 10 ghosts are devastating in large numbers, so try to split them up into more manageable groups. We hear that Holy damage lays the hurt out on them, so you may want to get your Monks to bring along one of their offensive spells if they can fit it in their task bar.
When you cut through the ghosts, you’ll have to find a graveyard monument in a small crevasse with steps leading down to it. If the book-carrier clicks on the monument, you’ll get your bonus experience.

Items
One of the unique (and sometimes frustrating) aspects of Guild Wars is that, for a good bulk of your character’s early life, you’re going to be finding virtually nothing of worth on the enemies that you kill. If you’re used to upgrading your items from enemy drops in games like World of Warcraft or Diablo II, then this system can be frustrating, as you’re going to have to wait a while and invest a goodly number of hours in the game before you can start to really get the good loot that’s often the point of these games. Enemies don’t start to drop rare items until you’re into the teen levels, and early magical items (which are represented by blue names when they drop) are often only marginally better than their vendor trash counterparts.
Collectors
Early-game items are going to be best obtained through running quests, and by hitting collectors. In pre-Searing Ascalon, the only way to obtain armor will be to run and find the various collectors that dwell outside the towns. These collectors will ask for a certain number of a certain item, and let you know what they’ll give you in return when you first approach them. For instance, Brownlow, who’s just outside the walls of Ascalon, will request that you bring him five Skale Fins, which drop off of the River Skales and River Skale Tads in the river south of his location. When you return, he’ll offer you a Belt Pouch, which will give you five extra inventory slots.

By the time you actually find some of the crafters, you’ll already have better equipment than what they offer.
There are many collectors scattered throughout the lands, sometimes in difficult-to-reach places (although most of them are pretty easy to reach before the Searing). The key thing to remember here is that collectors are initially the only way to upgrade your armor, so if you’re intent on getting away from the initial armor sets, you might want to try tracking down some of the collectors and upgrading your look. If you don’t want to worry about upgrading your armor before the Searing, then don’t; it’s relatively easy to make the initial armor upgrades in Ascalon City post-Searing, which are going to be better than the stuff the collectors offer you for a good long while. Unfortunately, in post-Searing Ascalon, the collectors will generally give you fairly underwhelming stuff, but you may still want to check their offerings and see what they have available for you. Also note that the offerings of collectors will change based on your primary profession in most situations.
(One notable collector in post-Searing Ascalon is Innis the White in Old Ascalon, near Ambassador Zain. If you bring him four Singed Gargoyle Skulls (found on the many Gargoyles in the area), he’ll offer up a War Hammer that does 11-17 damage, with a massive +25 damage bonus to Charr enemies. Most Warriors will want to pick one of these up for the many missions that will pit you against Charr forces.)
Crafting
In addition to collectors, you can also try your hand at crafting new items when you get past the searing and wind up in the ruined portion of Ascalon City. Crafting before you encounter the Searing is a bit of a pain, and isn’t very rewarding, but immediately after the Searing you should be able to effect some pretty big defensive improvements by hitting up the armorers in Ascalon City and using them to make some new armor.
In order to craft armor, you’re going to need to have a goodly amount of gold (150 per piece is the going rate, it seems), but you’ll also need to have crafting materials, such as Wood Planks, Bolts of Cloth, and so on. (If an item can be used in crafting, it’ll say so in it’s mouse-over description.) Some of these will drop naturally off of enemies, but for the most part, you’re going to have to make your own crafting items by using a Salvage kit on other items that drop. For instance, as you run around killing things, you’ll be picking up plenty of crappy hammers, swords, and pieces of unusable armor off of your enemies. When you buy a Salvage Kit and use it on these pieces of vendor trash, it’ll be converted into some kind of crafting item. (Usually, anyway; some items can’t be salvaged and can only be sold.)
When you have a bunch of crafting items stored away, hit the armorers and see what you need for a certain piece of armor. Most classes will need something corresponding to the type of armor that they wear, so Warriors will need Iron Ingots and the like to construct their chainmail, while less-armorific classes will have to make do with Leather Squares or Bolts of Cloth. Anyway, when you have the required number of crafting items to make an item, you can drag them to the armorer and pay him to put the thing together for you, and voila, a new piece of armor.
Rare Crafting Items
Things get a little more complicated when we start thinking about rare crafting items and item transmutations. In order to make some of the better craftable equipment, you’ll need to have rare crafting items, but these can be difficult to find (as is probably obvious, considering that they’re rare). In order to obtain rare items, you’ll need to either head to a Materialist, or find them yourself with the Expert Salvage Kit.
Materialists are special vendors that can convert Common Crafting Items into Rare Crafting Items, for a price. With your crafting materials in your inventory, you can walk up to a Materialist, hand over your items and some cash and get your sweet, sweet rare crafting materials. The Materialists that we know of dwell just outside the exit from Fort Ranik and the Sanitarium (where the Abbey was pre-Searing), and there’s also an advanced one in the Ascalon Foothills, to the southeast of Yak’s Bend.

When you reach Yak’s Bend, you can find Artisan Rudger in the Ascalon Foothills and have him make some decently rare crafting materials.
This latter vendor is the object of the Missing Artisan quest given to you in Yak’s Bend, and can produce Clay Bricks, Tempered Glass Vials, Leather Square, Vial of Ink, Lump of Charcoal, Spiritwood Plank, Bolt of Linen, and Steel Ingots, all in a one-stop shopping experience. He’s going to be really tough to get to for most players, though, since he’s surrounded by level 10 Hydra. He is, however, relatively close to the entrance from Traveler’s Vale to the Foothills, so if you load up a team full of henchmen, clear your way to the entrance, then just make a break for the Materialist, your henchmen should be able to distract the Hydra long enough for you to get to the Materialist and make your transaction. It obviously helps to have some kind of healing here, as you may get killed shortly after you reach him. If you manage to open up his trade window before you die, though, it should be open and ready to go after you resurrect back at the shrine, allowing you to cheat death yet again.
So the basic recipe for crafting items that need rare ingredients is to find out what you need, obtain the common crafting items by converting vendor trash with a Salvage Kit, then hitting up a Materialist to get the rare items that you need. (If you’re having trouble finding the common crafting items, then you can return to Ascalon City and talk to the Materials Trader there, who’ll usually have a bunch of common items up for sale.)
Expert Salvage Kits will also allow you to nab rare crafting materials. When you obtain Expert Salvage Kits (which you can buy off the merchant in Yak’s Bend when you reach that town, or have guildmates buy for you if you’re not that far), you can use them just like a normal salvage kit, but Expert kits will give you a small chance to retrieve rare parts from the crap you salvage. Not everything can yield rare crafting items, though; indeed, most of the vendor trash and salvage items that drop in the areas around Ascalon will never yield rare items, no matter how often you break them down. It’s best to reserve your Expert kits for items that you find around Yak’s Bend and beyond if you don’t want to waste their significant cost (400 gold a pop).
Upgrading
Another type of vendor that you’ll find in the cities of Tyria are Weapons vendors. These guys offer up numerous substandard weapons for sale, if you’re in the mood to pick up something terrible, but will more importantly give you the chance to customize weapons. Customizing a weapon will prevent anyone but you from using it, and will add 20% to the total damage, for the low low cost of 10 gold.
In addition to straightforward upgrading, you can also happen to find runes and upgrade parts when you use your Expert Salvage Kit on certain salvage items and weapons. These runes and upgrades will list their effects on their tooltip when you mouse over them; if you think you can make immediate use of these items, doubleclick on them to apply them to a piece of armor or another item. Since you replace your armor only very rarely, it’s best to throw runes onto armor; weapon upgrades obviously have to have to be used on weapons themselves, so be sure you have something useful in hand before using one, as using an upgrade permanently removes it from your inventory.
Note that many of these upgrades will list themselves as being “unlocked” when you first find them; this means that, should you decide to create a PVP-exclusive character at the character creation screen, you’ll be able to apply these runes and upgrades to your equipment free of charge.
PVP Tips
One of the main draws of Guild Wars is its strong PVP component, in which you can jump right into a fight with a minimal wait, fight for a few minutes, then keep going or go back to the PVE content if you wish. PVP in Guild Wars is a fun, fast-paced experience, but one that’s quite a bit different than PVE and will require a bit of customization on your part if you want to get the most out of the experience. This section of the guide isn’t intended to be the be-all-and-end-all of PVP tippery (tippage? Tipology?) but hopefully we can provide a few pointers to get you on your way towards battlefield dominance.
There are a few PVP battlegrounds in Guild Wars, including those in Ascalon City, Yak’s Bend, and one at Fort Koga at game’s end. If you enter one of these zones, you’ll be able to choose Start Mission to warp yourself into a PVP game with three random other players. After that, you’ll have 25 seconds to get steeled up for the fight, at which points the gates open and it’s kill-or-be-killed action. You do get experience for winning in PVP, even though you don’t get gold or items, so it can be a way to improve your character while having fun at the same time.
Use Resurrection Signets
Resurrection Signets are non-optional in PVP combat. Sorry, but they’re not; all of your party members should have them on their skill bar when they enter a game. You obviously can’t control your human teammates’ skill choices, but at the very least be sure to have Resurrection Signet good to go when you enter a PVP round. It only takes three seconds to cast, and will restore your target to full life when used. Of course, you can only use it once, but it’s one of the only ways for non-Monks to resurrect a teammate.
Monks do have the option of using Resurrect or Restore Life multiple times in a PVP battle, but you probably shouldn’t do so. Each of these requires eight full seconds to cast, making it quite likely that you’ll be interrupted or knocked down by an enemy while casting them. Although they do have the lure of being theoretically usable as often as you like, in practice you’re unlikely to be able to get even one off. Resurrection Signet also has the bonus of being free to cast, making it easily usable even when you’re running low on energy.
Signet of Capture
One of the reasons that players who go through the PVE content before jumping into the end-game PVP will be so powerful is because of the Signet of Capture, which lets you obtain Elite skills from boss monsters scattered around the game world. To obtain a Signet of Capture, make your way to Quarrel Falls and buy one from the skills vendor there. Each Signet of Capture will cost you one skill point, but the gold required to buy it will be calculated separately from your normal skills, meaning that it should be much cheaper to obtain.
With a Signet of Capture in your inventory, you can equip it to your skill bar before heading out into the wilderness. When you fight boss enemies (the ones that are outlined in color), check what they’re casting by watching their status bar, and capture one of their skills by using the Signet immediately after they cast something you want. You’ll lose your Signet of Capture when you capture a skill, but you can buy as many of them as you want and carry them around like inventory items (although you’ll still only be able to equip them in town, like normal skills).
The important thing about Signet of Capture is that it’s the only way to net Elite skills, which will have a direct impact on your efficiency in PVP. Elite skills aren’t necessarily overpowering, but in many cases they are going to be strictly better than normal skills, or have powerful effects that you won’t find on skills you can buy from a skills vendor. If you want to be great in PVP, then you’ll probably want to continue to search out boss enemies and steal their skills with Signet of Capture in PVE, even after you hit level 20 and have “beaten” the game.
Avoid Pre-Made Characters

Always take a few seconds to Tab through your enemies before engaging them in combat. Knowing what you’re up against will let you target the weak link and take it out.
If you’re serious about playing PVP, then you may be tempted to use the PVP-Only Character option at the character creation screen. PVP-Only characters come pre-loaded to level 20 with some decent equipment, but they’re weak in a lot of respects. For one thing, most of the skills in the game will be locked off to your PVP characters until you find them with a Roleplaying Character, meaning that you’ll only have a dozen or so skills to your name if you make a PVP character as soon as you install the game. You also won’t have the benefit of runes or weapon upgrades.
If you really want a prime PVP experience, then, be sure not to create a PVP character right off the bat; instead, you’ll probably want to play through the roleplaying game and find as much Phat Lewt as possible, and unlock as many skills as possible, before ascending to the Hall of the Gods and going crazy in PVP combat there. You can probably contribute with a pre-made PVP character, but you’re going to be at a severe disadvantage compared to the grognards who’ve pumped their characters up with runes and have found dozens of elite skills.
Customize Your Skills
The neat thing about PVP play is that the skillset you choose for PVE isn’t going to be quite as effective as you might think. Warriors and the like will often spec for pure damage in PVE play, but in PVP things like interrupting and hexing your opponents becomes awfully important as well.
Finding the perfect balance of skills is going to take a little trial-and-error; you just have to learn to be flexible and sometimes dump that totally killtacular skill in favor of one with a more subtle, but more useful effect. If you’re planning on playing PVP for a while, then you might even want to consider refocusing your attributes or equipment to allow for more effective play. For example, Blood Magic is probably a bit more useful in PVP than is Death Magic for Necros (no offense, Death Necros), thanks to its ability to cause massive health loss over time for your opponents, so you might want to just take away some of your Death Magic points and pump them into Blood Magic before a furious bout of PVP action gets going. You’ll use up one Attribute Refund point for each point you take off, but you gain another one back for each 250 experience you earn in PVE combat, so you’ll normally be running around with the maximum amount of points here anyway. Mesmers are going to need to be especially careful in switching their spells around, as they have plenty of spells that are too narrow to be of much use in PVE, but which are powerhouses in PVP, when you’re assured of going up against casters.
Equipment changes aren’t usually so drastic, but Warriors may find that they like to use one type of weapon in PVP and another type in PVE, perhaps due to the fact that they have a larger number of skills for Swords than for Hammers, but have a big Hammer that’s useful in PVE beatdowns. (Although, while we’re on the topic, the Warrior’s Hammer Bash skill is one of the best ways to prevent casters from casting spells in PVP.) Casters may also want to change their wands and off-hand items as the situation dictates, since many of them have bonuses that are tied to their attribute points.
Customize Your Interface
Another aspect of the PVP game that you may want to modify to suit your style is the interface. There are a few features in the interface that you don’t necessarily need to have on your screen in PVP battle, such as your experience bar, the trade button, and, if you only use one type of weapon, the weapons bar. If you want to reduce screen clutter, feel free to eliminate anything you don’t find yourself using in PVP battles; you can always restore them later if you feel like it.
By clicking on the “Edit Interface” button in the Customize tab in the Menu, you’ll also be able to move screen elements around. We found it helpful to move the Effects Monitor closer to the center of the screen from its starting position, to help us monitor harmful Hexes that were being placed on us, but again, feel free to mix and match as you like.
Go For The Healers
Speaking as people who play primarily as a healing Monk, there’s nothing we like more than when a group of enemies ignores us and lets us do our healing from behind the front lines. When we don’t have to worry about our own health, we can safely sit back, cast Healing Breeze over and over again, and when things go rough, we have a large reservoir of health to convert into healing with Infuse Health. Infuse Health is a skill that takes half of the Monk’s current health and transfers it to the target ally, with a percentage boost tacked on top of it. Any decent Monk that’s gone through a significant amount of the game’s PVE content will have unlocked this skill, so you can bet that it’ll pop up during PVP play as well. When a Monk is left alone, it essentially lets him or her instantly heal a single ally to full health, when they’ve boosted their Healing attribute a good way up, and that’s pretty damn powerful for something that only costs 10 Energy. If you consistently harry and harrass Monks, though, the effectiveness of Infuse Health is reduced, since it works off of their current health total. Drop their health, and Infuse Health becomes a non-factor in a fight.

RUN AWAAAAAAY! A single powerful warrior can harry a Monk quite effectively.
What’s more, it’s just plain annoying to get beat on when you’re a Monk. As long as we have energy, we’ll usually be able to survive for a good long while, but we’ll have to focus a large amount of our energy towards healing ourselves rather than our teammates. When you beat on a Monk, you can expect them to use Healing Breeze fairly often, and when you get towards the end of the game, you can expect this to give them six-eight ticks of health regeneration, which is going to be enough to counteract a single warrior’s damage in most cases. If you have any methods of eliminating enchantments, then, it’d be wise to concentrate fire on the Monk and blast away their Healing Breeze before it works too well. Mesmer skills are especially annoying to Monks, with things like Backfire being tremendously effective in shutting them down.
Anyway, if you get rid of a Monk, then you’ll definitely have an easier time beating the rest of a PVP team. You’ll have to kill the Monk twice, or perhaps three times in some fights, due to Resurrection Signets, but after they come back to life they’ll won’t have much energy in the tank, so hit them again before they can build it back up and get back into the fight. You shouldn’t exclusively focus on a Monk, but you’ll probably want to dedicate at least two of your players to killing them.
This is all contingent on there actually being a healing Monk on the other team, of course; many times there won’t be. In that case you can aim for whomever you like. We find Necromancers and Rangers to be ideal primary targets in these cases, due to their ability to cast area heals for their party members like Well of Blood.
You know what? Again, speaking as people who primarily play as Healing Monks, forget all that. We were just kidding. Leave us alone and let us heal.
Mesmerism FTW
Although Mesmers aren’t necessarily a powerhouse class in PVE, they can be justly feared in PVP combat by casters and warriors alike. Since you stand a good chance of facing off against casters in any given PVP battle, though, you’re going to want to ensure that you have plenty of skills on your taskbar as a Mesmer to deal with them.
Most casters will naturally be using their wands to fill up the deadspace between spellcasting, so Spirit Shackle can be valuable in penalizing them for not paying attention to their buff bar, since it’ll drain them of five energy each time they attack. (This is of course also quite valuable when used on Warriors, since it’ll likely drain their energy completely if it has a boosted duration.) If you’re interested in stealing energy from an enemy, then Energy Tap and Energy Drain are both good for ripping your enemy’s resources away from them. They do virtually the same thing, save that Energy Drain has a slightly shorter casting time and is Elite. The virtue in using both of them, though, is that they both have a 20 second cooldown time, meaning that you won’t be able to use Energy Tap more than three times a minute. Adding Energy Drain will allow you to steal energy twice as often, and since these skills are effectively free (since you steal more than they cost, assuming you don’t get interrupted), you can feel free to cast them on enemy spellcasters as often as you wish.
Other useful spells for PVP are Shatter Enchantment and Drain Enchantment, both of which strip enchantment spells from a target foe, and either damage that foe or restore energy to the Mesmer. If your team prefers to gang up on a single target, then be sure to cast one of these as soon as you spot a Healing Breeze effect pop onto the enemy, as this is the spell that many Monks will be relying on to deal their damage.
In addition to their anti-energy spells, Mesmers have a lot of ways to deal with physical damage. Soothing Images is a specifically anti-Warrior spell, in that it prevents the target from gaining adrenaline for a goodly length of time, effectively preventing them from using any of their Warrior combat skills for the duration. If one of the members of your team is running away from an attacker (or if you yourself are getting pounded), you can lay down Imagined Burden to cut the attacker’s movement speed in half for a few seconds, long enough to let them effect their getaway.
This is just a basic toot-of-the-horn for Mesmers. It’s a difficult profession to be good at, and many of their skills are less than overwhelming in PVE combat, but a well-played Mesmer in PVP is a valuable addition to any team.
Charrrrge!
In most PVP matches, there’s going to be a period of waiting at the outset. After the gates open, most teams will pause for a second, tab through the enemy ranks, and pick their targets. If your team has won a few rounds together, then you may be able to increase your chances of winning by just running towards your enemies pell-mell and smashing into them before they have time to pick their targets. This works best when you have a single able player that’s good at locking on to the weakest member of an enemy team and whom can lead a team with targetting, preferably a warrior. If you work together as a team, you can just switch on autorun, follow your leader into the enemy group, and start chopping before they get situated. This is especially helpful when taking on enemy groups that are in their first game and haven’t had time to mesh.
You Win Some, You Lose Some

A good group is a wonderful thing, if only because they’re few and far between.
The thing to remember about PVP in Guild Wars is that, due to the fact that your groups are randomized in most of the arenas, you stand an even chance of being put into a pretty poorly composed group. You know the ones: all Mesmers, all Elementalists and Necromancers, or so on. You really do need variety in a group to succeed, so when you come up into a poorly-composed group, you should play to win, but a lot of the times you’re kind of doomed from the start, with player ability being an X factor.
On the flip side, no matter how good your group is, there’s always going to be another group out there that’s a little better, whether in terms of group dynamics or composition. There are enough Warrior/Monks out there in the game world to make it an even bet that you’ll eventually come across a group with three of them and another character. We faced off against a group once that was three Warrior/Monks and a Monk/Warrior, and we’re pretty sure that that kind of group can keep going until one of the members has to quit.
So, in short, don’t get frustrated if you lose a few times in a row; it happens to everyone. Eventually you’ll find a group that meshes, and you’ll be off on a 15-0 tear. And when that happens, it makes for some pretty memorable gameplay!
Acknowledgements
Thanks to GameSpot forum users Cold-Fusion, twisted_by_dezign, Pug_of_Crydee, and especially F1_2004 for their contributions to the PVP section of this guide.

THE AZTEC ACCOUNT OF THE SPANISH CONQUEST OF MEXICO

THE AZTEC ACCOUNT OF THE SPANISH CONQUEST OF MEXICO
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The Aztec Account of the
Spanish Conquest of Mexico
By Bernal Diaz del Castillo (1492-1584)
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The Aztec Account of the Spanish Conquest of Mexico
Introduction
On November 8, 1519, the Spanish
conquistadors first entered the great city
of Mexico, the metropolis the Aztecs had
built on a lake island. Don Hernando
Cortes, who was accompanied by six
hundred Spaniards and a great many
native allies, at last could see for himself
the temples and palaces about which he
had heard so many marvels. The
Spaniards arrived from the direction of
Tlalpan, to the south of the city, passing
across one of the wide causeways that
connected the island with the mainland.
When they reached a locality known as
Xoloco, they were welcomed by the last
of the Motecuhzomas, who had come out to meet them in the belief that the white men must be
Quetzalcoatll and other gods, returning at last from across the waters now known as the Gulf of
Mexico. Thus Cortes and his men entered the city, not only as guests, but also as gods coming
home. It was the first direct encounter between one of the most extraordinary pre-Columbian
cultures and the strangers who would eventually destroy it.
Cortes landed on the coast at Veracruz on Good Friday, April 22, 1519; the Aztec capital
surrendered to him on August 13, 1521. The events that took place between these two dates have
been recounted in a number of chronicles and other writings, of which the best known are the
letters Cortes wrote to King Charles V and the True History of the Conquest of Mexico by Bernal
Diaz del Castillo. These two works, along with a few others also written by Spaniards, until now
have been almost the only basis on which historians have judged the conquest of one of the
greatest civilizations in pre-Columbian America.
But these chronicles present only one side of the story, that of the conquerors. For some reasonscorn,
perhaps-historians have failed to consider that the conquered might have set down their
own version in their own language. This book is the first to offer a selection from those
indigenous accounts, some of them written as early as 1528, only seven years after the fall of the
city. These writings make up a brief history of the Conquest as told by the victims, and include
passages written by native priests and wise men who managed to survive the persecution and
death that attended the final struggle. The manuscripts from which we have drawn are now
preserved in a number of different libraries, of which the most important are the National Library
in Paris, the Laurenziana Library in Florence and the library of the National Museum of
Anthropology in Mexico City.
Path of the Conquest
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The Indian accounts of the Conquest contain many passages whose dramatic interest is equal to
that of the great classical epics. As Homer, singing in the Iliad of the fall of Troy, depicted
scenes of the most vivid tragic realism, so the native writers, masters of the black and red ink
evoked the most dramatic moments of the Conquest. A few paragraphs from the documents
presented in this book will make this clear.
The Indian chroniclers describe the beginning of the terrible slaughter perpetrated by Pedro de
Alvarado in the patio of the main temple in Tenochtitlan. After mentioning the first rituals of the
fiesta that was being celebrated-a fiesta in which “song was linked to song”- they tell how the
Spaniards entered the sacred patio:
They ran in among the dancers, forcing their way to the place where the
drums were played. They attacked the man who was drumming and cut off
his arms. Then they cut off his head, and it rolled across the floor.
They attacked all the celebrants, stabbing them, spearing them, striking
them with their swords. They attacked some of them from behind, and these
fell instantly to the ground with their entrails hanging out. Others they
beheaded: they cut off their heads, or split their heads to pieces.
They struck others in the shoulders, and their arms were torn from their
bodies. They wounded some in the thigh and some in the calf. They slashed
others in the abdomen, and their entrails all spilled to the ground. Some
attempted to run away, but their intestines dragged as they ran; they seemed
to tangle their feet in their own entrails. No matter how they tried to save
themselves, they could find no escape.
Another passage, a masterpiece of the descriptive art of the Aztecs, shows how the Indians
pictured the “stags or deer” on which the Spaniards rode. Motolinia, one of the early
missionaries, wrote that the Indians “were filled with wonder to behold their horses, and the
Spaniards riding on their backs.” Now they present their own description, so vivid that it recalls
another extraordinary picture of the horse, written in Hebrew by the author of the Book of Job.
They report:
The “stags” came forward, carrying the soldiers on their backs. The soldiers
were wearing cotton armor. They bore their leather shields and their iron
spears in their hands, but their swords hung down from the necks of the
“stags.”
These animals wear little bells, they are adorned with many little bells. When
the “stags” gallop, the bells make a loud clamor, ringing and reverberating.
These ” stags, ” these “horses,” snort and bellow. They sweat a very great
deal, the sweat pours from their bodies in streams. The foam from their
muzzles drips onto the ground. It spins out in fat drops, like a lather of
amole.
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They make a loud noise when they run; they make a great din, as if stones
were raining on the earth. Then the ground is pitted and scarred where they
set down their hooves. It opens wherever their
hooves touch it.
The indigenous documents contain a number of scenes
like these, so vivid that they seem to invite the artist to
interpret them with his pen or brush. But to understand
this epic narrative of the Conquest, it is important to
know something of Aztec history, geography and culture.
The following sketch is necessarily limited to the broad
outlines, but at least it will provide a context in which the
indigenous narratives can be seen more clearly.
Cultural Stages of Ancient Mexico
The grandeur that the conquistadors beheld in the Aztec
capital was obviously not the result of spontaneous
generation. It was the last phase of a long cultural
sequence beginning well before the Christian era. In this
brief review of the evolution of culture in ancient
Mexico, we will attempt to correlate the various stages
with well-known events in the history of the Old World.
Although man has existed on earth for at least half a million years, the first human beings to
reach the American continent appear to have arrived only about twenty thousand years ago. Man
is an even more recent phenomenon in the Valley of Mexico, since the most ancient human
fossil-discovered in Tepexpan, near the famous pyramids of Teotihuacan-is probably no more
than ten thousand years old.
The development of superior cultural forms also came much later in America than in the Old
World. Egypt and Mesopotamia had contrived modes of writing as far back as the fourth
millennium before Christ, but in America-specifically in Mexico-we must wait until the middle
of the second millennium B.c. before we can discover the earliest vestiges of systematic
agriculture and the making of pottery.
The most ancient architectural remains in Mexico, indicating the presence of ceremonial centers,
date from about five hundred years before Christ, a time when the Old World had already heard
the words of the Biblical prophets, and when the first pre-socratic philosophers had already
spoken in Greece. Perhaps the earliest cultural ferment of any importance in pre-Columbian
Mexico took place on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. A number of extraordinary artifacts have
been found there, along with the oldest calendar inscription yet discovered. For lack of a better
name, these mysterious artificers have been called the Olmecs, an Aztec word meaning “people
of the region of rubber.” At a later period their art, techniques and religious ideas influenced a
The Valley of Mexico
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number groups which had migrated from the distant northern shores of the Pacific Ocean. This
cultural influence was to have significant and widespread consequences.
At the beginning of the Christian era, while Rome was consolidating her empire and Christianity
had begun to spread through the Mediterranean world, Mexico witnessed the emergence of what
can also be called true empires. The foundations of the earliest sacred cities of the Mayas-Tikal,
Uaxactun, Copan and Palenque -were constructed in the jungles of Central America. And in the
central region of Mexico, about thirty-five miles north of the modern capital, the great “city of
the gods”-Teotihuacan-began to rise. Its pyramids, palaces, sculptures, frescoes and inscriptions
would become a paradigm and inspiration for the artists and artisans of later peoples. Many of its
inscriptions and representations of the gods were reproduced in the Aztec art and codices of the
Conquest period. The apogee of Mayan and Teotihuacan culture coincides in time with the fall of
the Roman Empire.
During the fourth and fifth centuries A.D. inscriptions based on a partly ideographic, partly
phonetic mode of writing became extremely abundant, especially among the Mayas. They testify
to the fact that these cultures possessed a profound sense of time and history. The Mayan
calendar is further proof, for it was slightly closer to the astronomical year than our own presentday
calendar, and much closer than that being used in Europe at the same period.
The great ritual centers at Teotihuacan and in the Mayan area began to decline in the eighth and
ninth centuries and were eventually abandoned. The causes are for the most part unknown. Some
authors have attributed their downfall to the arrival of new tribes from the north; at least it is
certain that the northern barbarians like the Germanic tribes in the Roman world-were a constant
threat to established cultures. In Europe the ninth century saw the consolidation of feudalism; a
little later new kingdoms were founded within a cultural milieu composed of Greco-Roman and
barbarian elements. A new state also arose in central Mexico and culturally it was also a
composite, having been greatly influenced by the Teotihuacan civilization. This was the socalled
“Toltec Empire,” composed of people from the north who spoke the same Nahuatl tongue
which a few centuries later became the language of the Aztecs.
The Toltecs settled in Tula, about fifty-five miles northeast of the City of Mexico, and under the
aegis of their great culture-hero, Quetzalcoatl, they gradually extended the civilization created at
Teotihuacan. A number of indigenous texts describe the Toltecs in detail: they were superb
artisans, devout worshipers, skillful tradesmen- extraordinary persons in every way. Their
prestige became so great that for the Aztecs the word “Toltec” was a synonym for “artist.” The
cultural achievements of the Toltecs spread far beyond their city at Tula; in fact their influence
even reached down into Yucatan and Central America, where it can be clearly discerned in the
Mayan religious center at Chichen-Itza. As a result of these Toltec influences, the Mayas
experienced a major cultural renascence.
But Tula, like other cities before it, was finally abandoned, perhaps because of fresh invasions
from the north. Quetzalcoatl departed eastward, promising that some day he would return from
across the sea. The new arrivals adopted the cultures of Teotihuacan and the Toltecs, and a
number of city-states began, to form along the shores of the great lake in the Valley of Mexico.
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This was the beginning of another cultural renascence, almost exactly contemporaneous with the
early Renaissance in Italy.
In the thirteenth century two of the city-states achieved
considerable splendor. One of them, the famous
Culhuacan, was located on the southern shore of the lake,
near what is now the University of Mexico. Much of its
greatness resulted from the fact that many of its
inhabitants were of Toltec origin. The other state,
Azcapotzalco, which now forms part of the northeastern
sector of the capital, was a mixture of a great many
ethnic groups. Its people were especially gifted as
warriors and administrators, and Azcapotzalco therefore
became a good deal more powerful than its neighbor to
the south.
The Aztecs or Mexicas were the last of the many
nomadic tribes to enter the Valley of Mexico from the
north. They arrived during the middle of the thirteenth
century, and attempted to settle in one or another of the
flourishing city-states, but wherever they appeared, they
were violently driven away as undesirable foreigners. It
is true that they spoke the same language as the old
Toltecs, but otherwise they were almost totally
uncultured. The only heritage they brought with them, besides the Nahuatl tongue, was an
indomitable will.
After a whole series of defeats and humiliations, the Aztecs succeeded in establishing themselves
on an island in the lake; the ancient codices state that their city was founded in the year 1325. A
little more than a century later, incredible as it may seem, this destitute tribe had been able to
assimilate the old cultural traditions and, at the same time, to achieve complete independence.
Then they began their career as conquerors, extending their rule from the Gulf coast to the
Pacific and as far south as Guatemala-and again they accomplished all this in only one century.
Their capital grew rich and powerful, much more powerful than Teotihuacan or Tula had ever
been. Its temples, palaces and gardens were so magnificent that the Spanish conquistadors gaped
in astonishment.
During this same period, however, the Old World had begun to discover new regions. Portuguese
navigators reached Madeira and the Azores between 1416 and 1432- the first step toward the
discovery of the New World. Other explorers crossed the Equator off the coast of Africa in about
1470, and in 1487 Bartolomew Diaz sailed as far as the Cape of Good Hope. Less than a decade
later Christopher Columbus landed on the shores of America. Hence, the “explosion” which
spread Aztec rule and planted Aztec culture over vast regions was contemporaneous with another
expansionist movement, and the latter, with superior weapons, techniques and tactics, proved
much the more powerful. When the Old World and the Aztecs in the New World met face to face
Tenochtitlan
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on that November day in 1519, their attitudes toward each other very different. The Aztecs, as
we have said, thought the strangers were Quetzalcoatl and other gods returning from over the
sea, while the Spaniards-despite their amazement at the splendors of Tenochtitlan- considered
the Aztecs barbarians and thought only of seizing their riches and of forcing them to become
Christians and Spanish subjects.
This confrontation, vividly described both by the conquistadors and the natives, was something
more than a meeting between two expanding nations; it was the meeting of two radically
dissimilar cultures, two radically different modes of interpreting existence. Spain had recently
brought the long wars of reconquest against the Moors to a triumphant conclusion and was now
the greatest power in Europe. The Aztec state had also reached a climax, and its magnificence
was evident in its capital city and its vigorous religious, social, economic and political structure.
To understand more clearly the tragic loss that resulted from the destruction of indigenous
culture, it will be useful to view the great city as the “gods” viewed it before they leveled it to the
ground.
Tenochtitlan, the Aztec Metropolis
The beginnings of the Aztec capital were very humble. It was founded on a low-lying island so
undesirable that other tribes had not bothered to occupy it. The indigenous chronicles describe
the difficulties with which the Aztecs managed to build a few miserable huts and a small altar to
their supreme deity, the war-god Huitzilopochth. But their fierce will overcame every obstacle.
Less than two centuries later, the Spanish conquistador Bernal Diaz del Castillo thought that the
wonders he beheld must be a dream. The Spaniards had been welcomed into the city as guests of
Motecuhzoma, and a party of them-led by Cortes-climbed up to the flat top of the pyramid on
which the main temple was built. They were met by the Aztec king himself, who pointed out the
various sights.
So we stood looking about us, or that huge and cursed temple stood so high
that from it one could see over everything very well, and we saw the three
causeways which led into Mexico, that is the causeway of Iztapalapa by
which we had entered four days before, and that of Tacuba, and that of
Tepeaquilla, and we saw the fresh water that comes from Chapultepec which
supplies the city, and we saw the bridges on the three causeways which were
built at certain distances apart through which the water of the lake flowed in
and out from one side to the other, and we beheld on that great lake a great
multitude of canoes, some coming with supplies of food and others returning
loaded with cargoes or merchandise; and we saw that from every house of
that great city and of all the other cities that were built in the water it was
impossible to pass from house to house, except by drawbridges which were
made of wood or in canoes; and we saw in those cities Cues [temples] and
oratories like towers and fortresses and all gleaming white, and it was a
wonderful thing to behold; then the houses with flat roofs, and on the
causeways other small towers and oratories which were like fortresses.
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After having examined and considered all that we had seen we turned to look
at the great market place and the crowds of people that were in it, some
buying and others selling, so that the murmur and hum of their voices and
words that they used could be heard more than a league off. Some of the
soldiers among us who had been in many parts of the world, in
Constantinople, and all over Italy, and in Rome, said that so large a market
place and so full of people, and so well regulated and arranged, they had
never beheld before.
The Spanish soldier had good reasons for describing the city in such enthusiastic terms. Almost
nothing remains today of what he saw, but his account is corroborated by other writings, ancient
maps and archaeological investigations.
At the time of the Conquest, the area of the island on which the city stood had been increased by
means of fills, until it comprised a more or less regular square measuring about two miles on
each side. It was joined on the north to the island of Tlatelolco, originally an independent city,
but annexed by the Aztecs in 147 3. Tlatelolco was connected with the mainland by a causeway
that ran to the sanctuary of the mother-goddess Tonantzin on the northern shore of the lake. At
the present day the site of her temple is occupied by the Basilica of Tepeyac, dedicated to
Mexico’s patron saint, the Virgin of Guadalupe.
To the south of Tenochtitlan, another causeway-the one by which the Spaniards entered-joined
the mainland at Iztapalapa. The eastern edge of the city bordered the wide expanse of the lake,
and only during the clearest weather was it possible to see the city of Tezcoco, home of the
famous poet-king Nezahualcoyotl, on the opposite shore. Finally, on the west, another causeway
joined the city with the allied kingdom of Tlacopan or Tacuba; it was along this causeway that
the Spaniards fled on the disastrous Night of Sorrows.
Tenochtitlan was divided into four great sections. To the northwest stood Cuepopan, “the place
where flowers bloom,” which now forms the barrio or sector known as Santa Maria la Redonda;
to the southwest, Moyotlan, “the place of the gnats,” later dedicated by the Spanish missionaries
to the honor of St. John the Baptist; to the southeast, Teopan, “the place of the gods,” which
included the precinct of the main temple and which was known in colonial times by the name of
San Pablo; and to the northeast, Atzacoalco, “in the house of the herons,” which became the site
where the missionaries built the church of San Sebastian.
The two most important places in the capital were the sacred precinct of the main temple, with its
related temples, schools and other structures (in all, it contained seventy-eight buildings), and the
huge plaza in Tlatelolco that served as the principal market place, offering an astonishing variety
of products from far and near. The walled precinct of the main temple formed a great square
measuring approximately five hundred yards on each side. Today nothing is left of the temple
except a few remains that can be seen near the eastern walls of the Cathedral of Mexico. A
model of the precinct has recently been installed there.
The palace of Axayacatl, who ruled from 1469 to 148 1, stood on the western side of the main
temple, and it was here that the Spaniards were lodged when they arrived in the city as
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Motecuhzoma’s guests. The palace of Motecuhzoma, facing a broad plaza, stood on the site now
occupied by the National Palace of Mexico. And in addition to these and other structures, there
was a large number of lesser temples and stone and mortar buildings reserved as living quarters
for the nobles, merchants, artists and other persons. The streets of Tenochtitlan were
comparatively narrow, many of them with canals through which canoes from the lakeshore could
reach the center of the city. The capital boasted many other attractions, and the Spaniards were
particularly impressed by the botanical and zoological gardens, as nothing of the kind existed at
that time in their native land.
The population of Tenochtitlan at the time of the Conquest has been the subject of considerable
controversy, but beyond question it must have amounted at least to a quarter of a million. The
activities were many and colorful. Fiestas, sacrifices and other rituals were celebrated in honor of
the gods. Teachers and students met in the various calmecac and telpuchealli, the pre-Hispanic
centers of education. The coming and going of merchant canoes and the constant bustle in the
Tlatelolco market impressed the Spaniards so much that they compared the city to an enormous
anthill. The military exercises and the arrival and departure of the warriors were other colorful
spectacles. In brief, the life of Tenochtitlan was that of a true metropolis. The city was visited by
governors and ambassadors from distant regions. Gold, silver, rich feathers, cocoa, bark paper
and other types of tribute, along with slaves and victims for the human sacrifices, streamed in
along the streets and canals. The Spaniards were right: Tenochtitlan was indeed an anthill, in
which each individual worked unceasingly to honor the gods and augment the grandeur of the
city.
The Aztec Empire
The wealth and military power of Tenochtitlan were a result of the conquests accomplished by
Itzcoatl, who ruled between 1428 and 1440. He had joined with Nezahualcoyotl, king of
Tezcoco, to defeat Azcapotzalco and to form the so-called “triple alliance,” made up of
Tenochtitlan, Tezcoco and the relatively insignificant city of Tlacopan (Tacuba).
Another important factor in the growth of Aztec power was the shrewd work of the royal
counselor Tlacaelel, nephew to Itzcoatl who instituted a number of significant reforms in the
tribe’s political, religious, social and economic structure. As a profound student of the cultural
elements inherited from the Toltecs, he made use of everything that served his purpose-but he
also gave everything a special slant, for his purpose was to consolidate the strength and wealth of
the city. One of the indigenous texts in the Codice Matritense describes how Itzcoatl and
Tlacaelel rewarded the principal Aztec chieftains with lands and titles after the victory over
Azcapotzalco, and then says that the king and his adviser decided to give their people a new
version of Aztec history.
The preserved an account of their history,
but later it was burned,
during the reign of Itzcoatl.
The lords of Mexico decreed it,
the lords of Mexico declared:
“It is not fitting that our people
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should know these pictures.
Our people, our subjects, will be lost
and our land destroyed,
for these pictures are full of lies….
In the new version, recorded in a number of extant documents, the Aztecs claim to be descended
from the Toltec nobility, and their gods- Huitzilopochtli in particular-are raised to the same level
as the ancient creative gods Tezcadipoca, and Quetzalcoatl. But most important of all is the
exalted praise given to what can only be called a mystical conception of warfare, dedicating the
Aztec people, the “people of the sun,” to the conquest of all other nations. In part the motive was
simply to extend the rule of Tenochtitlan, but the major purpose was to capture victims for
sacrifice, because the source of all life, the sun, would die unless it were fed with human blood.
As a result, Huitzilopochtli ceased to be the tutelary god of a poor band of outcasts, and his rise
to greatness coincided with that of the Aztecs themselves. The old Toltec prayers, most of them
directed to Quetzalcoatl, were revised in his favor, and his priests composed a number of others.
Since he was identified with the sun, he was called “the Giver of Life” and “the Preserver of
Life.” Tlacaelel did not originate the idea that Huitzilopochtli-the-Sun had to be fed the most
precious food of all-human blood but he was unquestionably responsible for the central
importance that this idea acquired in the Aztec religion.
There is good evidence that human sacrifices were performed in the Valley of Mexico before the
arrival of the Aztecs, but apparently no other tribe ever performed them with such frequency.
The explanation seems to be that Tlacaelel persuaded the Aztec kings (he was counselor to
Motecuhzoma I and his successor Axayacatl after the death of Itzcoatl) that their mission was to
extend the dominions of Huitzilopochtli so that there would be a constant supply of captives to
be sacrificed. Fray Diego de Duran wrote that Itzcoatl “took only those actions which were
counseled by Tlacaelel,” and that he believed it was his mission “to gather together all the
nations” in the service of his god. It was also Tlacaelel who suggested the building of the great
main temple in Tenochtitlan, dedicated to Huitzilopochtli. Before the Spaniards destroyed it, it
was the scene of innumerable sacrifices of captives, first from nearby places and later from such
distant regions as Oaxaca, Chiapas and Guatemala.
The changes brought about by Tlacaelel in Aztec religious thought and ritual were his most
important accomplishments, but he also reformed the judicial system, the army, the protocol of
the royal court and the organization of pochtecas, or traveling merchants, and he even directed
the creation of a large botanical garden in Oaxtepec, on the outskirts of Cuauhtla in the presentday
state of Morelos. Despite his key role in Aztec history, Tlacaelel never consented to become
king, even though the nobles offered him the throne on the death of Itzcoatl in 1440 and again on
the death of Motecuhzoma I in 1469. He preferred to be the “power behind the throne,” using his
influence to realize what he considered to be the grand destiny of his people. He died a little
before 1481, without suspecting, of course, that the magnificence and power for which he was so
largely responsible would be destroyed in less than forty years. Considering the unquestionable
brilliance of this unusual man, who has been seriously neglected by the historians, one is tempted
to ask: What would have happened had the Spaniards arrived during his lifetime? The question is
unanswerable, but at least it is an interesting topic for speculation.
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To return for a moment to the conquests inspired by Tlacaelel’s advice, they began, as we have
seen, with the defeat of Azcapotzalco and the formation of the alliance with Tezcoco and
Tlacopan. Then the Aztecs set out to conquer the other city states around the lake, and one by
one Coyoacan, Cuitlahuac, Xochimilco and Chalco were forced to submit. Other states, alarmed
by the Aztecs’ growing power, elected to sign treaties with Tenochtitlan and to deliver it tribute.
Among these was the city-state of the Tlahuicas, a people with the same language and culture as
the Aztecs, in the southern part of what is now the state of Morelos.
Next the Aztecs marched eastward toward the Gulf coast, where the people of Cempoala also
agreed to pay tribute. It was in Cempoala that the Spaniards later took excellent advantage of the
enmity the Cempoaltecas bore toward their masters.
The succeeding phase of Aztec expansion was toward the south. Sometimes the armies arrived as
conquerors, at other times in search of trade, but their constant aim was to increase the power of
Tenochtitlan. They dominated the present-day states of Oaxaca and Chiapas, penetrated into
Guatemala and even according to some accounts- reached the Isthmus of Panama, sending or
bringing back tribute and trade goods to their capital.
The Aztecs, however, always respected the independence of their neighbors, the Tlaxcaltecas,
whose state was a “confederation of four republics.” There is no doubt that Tenochtitlan could
have overwhelmed Tlaxcala without too much difficulty, and the reason it did not is probably
that it wanted a nearby source of victims for the human sacrifices. Therefore the Aztecs
maintained an almost perpetual state of war with Tlaxcala, but never actually conquered it. Also,
the Aztecs seem to have regarded the frequent battles as a convenient way of testing and training
their younger warriors. This situation was so hateful to the Tlaxcaltecas that when Cortes arrived
they became his most loyal native allies, in the hope that with the aid of the strangers they could
at last defeat their oppressors.
By 1519 the Aztecs ruled over several million human beings, who spoke a variety of languages.
Their empire stretched from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf coast and from central Mexico to the
present-day Republic of Guatemala. The swift growth of their wealth and power naturally
resulted in significant changes in their old way of life. The incipient social classes were
consolidated, and the social-political structure became so elaborate that the Spanish
conquistadors found it almost as astonishing as some of the city’s architectural wonders.
Aztec Society
The stratification into social classes of what had been a mere band of nomads developed in a
rather unusual way. Once the Aztecs made contact with the advanced peoples who had inherited
Toltec culture, they acquired a profound admiration for them and wanted to link themselves to
the Toltec world by bonds of kinship. Hence, they chose as their first king, or tlatoani, a
nobleman of Toltec origin named Acamapichtli from Culhuacan. He fathered a great many
children by various Aztec women, and his descendants formed the nucleus of the social class of
nobles, or pipiltin, which increased rapidly both in size and importance. The pipiltin received a
much fuller education than other persons, were allowed to own land in their own names and
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filled the most important posts in government; the king, or tlatoani, could be chosen only from
their ranks.
The ordinary citizens formed the social class of the macehualtin. They were divided into what
have been called geographical clans, that is, groups of related families living in specific localities
and making communal use of the land assigned to them. Like the pipiltin, the macehualtin were
required to attend the communal schools, but they were not taught reading, writing, astrology,
theology or the other cultural legacies of the Toltecs. They were trained in agriculture and
warfare, and some of them became members of the artisan and merchant guilds.
In addition to these two major classes, there were also the mayeques, who worked the land for
others as slaves or serfs (though almost always for a limited period of time), and a considerable
number of actual slaves. It is necessary to point out that neither the mayeques nor the slaves were
clearly distinguished from the macehualtin as social classes.
In Tenochtitlan, Tezcoco and other cities there were groups of wise men known as tlamatinime.
These scholars carried on the study of the ancient religious thinking of the Toltecs, which
Tlacaelel had transformed into a mystical exaltation of war. Despite the popularity of the cult of
the war-god, Huitzilopochtli, the tlamatinime preserved the old belief in a single supreme god,
who was known under a variety of names. Sometimes he was called Tloque-Nahuaque, “Lord of
the Close Vicinity,” sometimes Ipalemohuani, “Giver of Life,” sometimes Moyocoyatzin, “He
who Creates Himself.” He also had two aspects, one masculine and one feminine. Thus he was
also invoked as Ometeotl, “God of Duality,” or given the double names Ometecuhtli and
Omecihuatl, “Lord and Lady of Duality,” Mictlantecuhtlitli and Mictecacihuatl, “Lord and Lady
of the Region of Death,” and others.
It is quite clear that to the tlamatinime the long list of names was merely a set of titles for a
single god, but the people believed it referred to a whole pantheon of separate deities. This, along
with the addition of tutelary gods like Huitzilopochtli, caused the Spaniards to regard the Aztecs
as an incredibly idolatrous and polytheistic nation. But a closer analysis of the religious thought
of the tlamatinime reveals that at least on the upper social levels, only one god was worshiped in
Tenochtitlan: the Lord of Duality, the Giver of Life.
Warfare in Ancient Mexico
After Tlacaelel inculcated the idea that Huitzilopochtli- the Sun had to be fed with the blood of
human sacrifices; war became a cultural institution of primary importance in Aztec life, since
war was the means of obtaining victims to appease the god’s insatiable hunger. Regardless of the
ostensible purpose of a military campaign-to conquer new territory, punish a rebellious vassal
state, or repel an aggressor-the Aztec warriors never forgot that their first duty was to take
captives to be sacrificed. This religious conception of warfare motivated the expansion of the
Aztec empire, but it also contributed to its destruction by the Spaniards. On several occasions the
Aztecs probably could have wiped out the Spaniards to the last man-their best chance of all was
on the Night of Sorrows-but the ceremonial elements in their attitude toward war prevented them
from taking full advantage of their opportunities.
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As in other cities in central Mexico, military training in Tenochtitlan began during early youth.
The army was made up of squads of twenty men, which were combined to form larger units of
about four hundred, under a tiachcauh who came from the same clan as the warriors he
commanded. The more important leaders were usually Eagle or Jaguar Knights, with such titles
as tlacatecatl (chief of men) and tlacochcalcatl (chief of the house of arrows).
The most important offensive weapon of the Aztecs was the Macana, a sort of paddle-shaped
wooden club edged with sharp bits of obsidian. It was so awesomely effective that on more than
one occasion during the Conquest warriors beheaded Spanish horses at a single stroke. Other
widely used arms were the atlati, or spear thrower, bows and arrows of different sizes, blowguns
and a variety of spears and lances, most of them with obsidian points. The defensive weapons
were shields made of wood or woven fibers-often elaborately painted and adorned with feathersand
quilted cotton armor. Some of the warriors also wore various types of masks and headdresses
to show that they were Eagle or Jaguar Knights or belonged to the higher military ranks.
A war or battle always commenced with a certain ritual: shields, arrows and cloaks of a special
kind were sent to the enemy leaders as a formal declaration that they would soon be attacked.
This explains the Aztecs’ surprise when the Spaniards, their guests, suddenly turned on them
without any apparent motive and-more important-without the customary ritual warning.
Pre-Hispanic Education
For over a hundred years before the Conquest, education in Tenochtitlan was compulsory for all
male children. They studied either in the specialized calmecac, of which there were at least six in
the city, or the telpochcalli, which were attended by the great majority. The students in the
calmecac were taught to read and interpret the codices and calendars; they also studied the tribe’s
history and traditions, and memorized the sacred hymns and other texts. So much emphasis was
placed on accurate memorization that after the Conquest it was possible to record many poems
and traditions that would otherwise have been lost forever. Most of the students in the calmecac
were sons of nobles or priests, but there is evidence that children of humble origin were
sometimes admitted if they showed exceptional aptitude.
Almost every sector or clan in Tenochtitlan had its own telpochcalli, dedicated to the god
Tezcatlipoca. The students were taught the fundamentals of religion and ethics, and were also
trained in the arts of war. In comparison with the calmecac, the telpochcalli offered a more basic
and practical education. As we have said, every boy had to attend one of these two types of
schools, and every father had to make a solemn vow, on the birth of a son, that he would send the
boy to school when he reached the proper age, which seems to have fluctuated between six and
nine years.
Pre-Hispanic Writing and Calendars
The highest cultures in ancient Mexico-especially the Mayas, Mixtecs, Toltecs and Aztecssucceeded
in developing their own systems of writing, as we can see from their carved
inscriptions and the few pre-Columbian codices that have been preserved. The Aztec system was
a combination of pictographic, ideographic and partially phonetic characters or glyphs,
representing numerals, calendar signs, names of persons, place names, etc. The Aztecs came
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closest to true phonetic writing in their glyphs for place names, some of which contained
phonetic analyses of syllables or even of letters. For example, the sounds a, e and o were
indicated by the symbols for water (ati), bean (etl) and road (otli). The paper used in the codices
was made by pounding and burnishing strips of bark from the amate tree (ficus petiolaris). The
illustrations in the present book have been adapted from post-Hispanic codices, of course, but the
original artists used the old modes to depict their version of the Conquest.
Like the Mixtecs and Mayas, the Aztecs had two principal types of calendars. One was the
xiupohualli, or “year-count,” based on the astronomical year and made up of eighteen groups or
months of twenty days each, with a remaining period of five days, called nemontemi, “those who
are there,” that was considered extremely unlucky. Despite the additional five days at the end, it
became obvious that the calendar was moving ahead of the actual year, and therefore an extra
day was added to every fourth year, as with our leap year. The other form of calendar was the
tonalpohualli, or “day-count.” It was not based on the astronomical year, for its twenty months
had only thirteen days each; instead it was calibrated to a fifty-two-year “century.” The
xiupohualli and tonalpobualli were related in various ways, but the whole topic of preHispanic
calendars is far too complicated to be explained in a brief space. We have kept a few of the Aztec
year, month and day names in this book, with explanatory footnotes where needed.
Indigenous Literature
The literary “remains” that have survived the Conquest and the intervening years are not as well
known as the sculpture and architecture of ancient Mexico, but they are surprisingly rich and
abundant. As we have seen, the Aztecs, Mayas and other peoples had their own modes of
writing, and some of the pre-Conquest codices are still in existence. In addition, the system of
memorization employed in the calmecac and telpochcalli preserved many of the ancient hymns,
myths, epic narratives and other literary compositions. It is true that the Spanish conquistadors -
along with certain churchmen – burned almost all of the codices and destroyed the pre-Hispanic
centers of education. But a few remarkable missionaries, particularly Bernardino de Sahagun and
Diego de Duran, undertook to gather up whatever they could of indigenous literature. They
managed to acquire a few codices that had escaped the flames, but their major accomplishment
was to save a great many of the old songs and narratives that were still faithfully remembered
after the Conquest. They worked out means of writing the native languages with the Latin
alphabet, and this enabled them-and their Indian pupils-to record the texts in the original words.
Dr. Angel Maria Garibay K., the most important modern authority on pre-Hispanic literature, has
shown that more than forty manuscripts containing Aztec literature are extant in various
European and American libraries. They offer a broad range of literary types: religious, lyric, epic
and dramatic poetry, and prose history, legends, moral teachings, etc. Some of them also present
poems and prose narratives describing the Conquest, written or dictated in Nahuatl by persons
who witnessed that tragic drama with their own eyes, and the major part of this book is made up
of selections from these indigenous accounts. The Appendix gives a brief description of the main
sources from which we have drawn.
Pronunciation of Nahuatl Words
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The Nahuatl language, which is also known as Aztec or Mexican, is part of the great Uto-Aztec
linguistic family. It has been spoken in central and southern Mexico, as well as in various parts
of Central America, from Toltec times to the present.
Written Nahuatl, using the Latin alphabet, was introduced by the Spanish missionaries soon after
the Conquest. With the exception of x, which is pronounced like the English sh, the letters have
the same phonetic value as in Spanish.
Practically all Nahuatl words are accented on the next to last syllable. This is often indicated
today by accents used according to rules of Spanish accentuation.
Chapter One
Omens Foretelling the Arrival of the Spaniards
Introduction
The documents presented in the first thirteen chapters relate the events that began a few years
before the arrival of the Spaniards on the east coast of Mexico and ended with the fall of
Tenochtitlan to the conquistadors. The last two chapters offer, by way of conclusion, a somewhat
different account of the Conquest written in 1528 by the anonymous informants of Tlatelolco,
and three of the icnocuicatl (threnodies, or songs of sorrow) lamenting the defeat and destruction
of the Aztec capital.
The texts have been arranged to give a chronological narrative of the Conquest, and they contain
a number of obvious
discrepancies and contradictions. We have not attempted to solve all of the problems which these
discrepancies pose for the historian. Our fundamental concern is with the human interest of the
accounts, which reveal how the Nahuas interpreted the downfall of their civilization. This first
chapter begins with a passage from the Codex Florentino; the original text is in the Nahuatl of
Sahagun’s native informants. It is followed by two selections from the Historia de Tlaxcala by
Diego Munoz Camargo, who married into the nobility of Tlaxcala. The Tlaxcaltecas allied
themselves with Cortes, and Munoz Camargo wrote from their point of view, but his description
of the omens which appeared in Mexico agrees quite closely with that of Sahagun’s informants.
The Omens as Described by Sahagun’s Informants
The first bad omen: Ten years before the Spaniards first came here, a bad omen appeared in the
sky. It was like a flaming ear of corn, or a fiery signal, or the blaze of daybreak; it seemed to
bleed fire, drop by drop, like a wound in the sky. It was wide at the base and narrow at the peak,
and it shone in the very heart of the heavens.
This is how it appeared: it shone in the eastern sky in the middle of the night. It appeared at
midnight and burned till the break of day, but it vanished at the rising of the sun. The thine
during which it appeared to us was a full year, beginning in the year 12-House.
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When it first appeared, there was great outcry and confusion. The people clapped their hands
against their mouths; they were amazed and frightened, and asked themselves what it could
mean.
The second bad omen: The temple of Huitzilopochtli burst into flames. It is thought that no one
set it afire, that it burned down of its own accord. The name of its divine site was Tlacateccan
[House of Authority].
And now it is burning, the wooden columns are burning! The flames, the tongues of fire shoot
out, the bursts of fire shoot up into the sky!
The flames swiftly destroyed all the woodwork of the temple. When the fire was first seen, the
people shouted: “Mexicanos, come running! We can put it out! Bring your water jars … ! ” But
when they threw water on the blaze it only flamed higher. They could not put it out, and the
temple burned to the ground.
The third bad omen: A temple was damaged by a lightning-bolt. This was the temple of
Xiuhtecuhtli which was built of straw, in the place known as Tzonmolco. It was rainIng that day,
but it was only a light rain or a drizzle, and no thunder was heard. Therefore the lightning-bolt
was taken as an omen. The people said: “The temple was struck by a blow from the sun.”
The fourth bad omen: Fire streamed through the sky while the sun was still shining. It was
divided into three parts. It flashed out from where the sun sets and raced straight to where the sun
rises, giving off a shower of sparks like a red-hot coal. When the people saw its long train
streaming through the heavens, there was a great outcry and confusion, as if they were shaking a
thousand little bells.
The fifth bad omen: The wind lashed the water until it boiled. It was as if it were boiling with
rage, as if it were shattering itself in its frenzy. It began from far off, rose high in the air and
dashed against the walls of the houses. The flooded houses collapsed into the water. This was in
the lake that is next to us.
The sixth bad omen: The people heard a weeping woman night after night. She passed by in the
middle of the night, wailing and crying out in a loud voice: “My children, we must flee far away
from this city!” At other times she cried: “My children, where shall I take you?”‘
The seventh bad omen: A strange creature was captured in the nets. The men who fish the lakes
caught a bird the color of ashes, a bird resembling a crane. They brought it to Motecuhzoma in
the Black House.’
This bird wore a strange mirror in the crown of its head. The mirror was pierced in the center like
a spindle whorl, and the night sky could be seen in its face. The hour was noon, but the stars and
the mamalhuaztli could be seen in the face of that mirror. Motecuhzoma took it as a great and
bad omen when he saw the stars and the mamalhuaztli.
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But when he looked at the mirror a second time, he saw a distant plain. People were moving
across it, spread out in ranks and coming forward in great haste. They made war against each
other and rode on the backs of animals resembling deer.
Motecuhzoma called for his magicians and wise men and asked them: “Can you explain what I
have seen? Creatures like human beings, running and fighting … But when they looked into the
mirror to answer him, all had vanished away, and they saw nothing.
The eighth bad omen: Monstrous beings appeared in the streets of the city: deformed men with
two heads but only one body. They were taken to the Black House and shown to Motecuhzoma,
but the moment he saw them, they all vanished away.
The Omens as Described by Munoz Camargo
Ten years before the Spaniards came to this land, the people saw a strange wonder and took it to
be an evil sign and portent. This wonder was a great column of flame which burned in the night,
shooting out such brilliant sparks and flashes that it seemed to rain fire on the earth and to blaze
like daybreak. It seemed to be fastened against the sky in the shape of a pyramid, its base set
against the ground, where it was of vast width, and its bulk narrowing to a peak that reached up
and touched the heavens. It appeared at midnight and could still be seen at dawn, but in the
daytime it was quelled by the force and brilliance of the sun. This portent burned for a year,
beginning in the year which the natives called 12-House-that is, 1517 in our Spanish reckoning.
When this sign and portent was first seen, the natives were overcome with terror, weeping and
shouting and crying out, and beating the Palms of their hands against their mouths, as is their
custom. These shouts and cries were accompanied by sacrifices of blood and of human beings,
for this was their practice whenever they thought they were endangered by some calamity.
This great marvel caused so much dread and wonder that they spoke of it constantly, trying to
imagine what such a strange novelty could signify. They begged the seers and magicians to
interpret its meaning, because no such thing had ever been seen or reported anywhere in the
world. It should be noted that these signs began to appear ten years before the coming of the
Spaniards, but that the year called 12-House in their reckoning was the year 1517, two years
before the Spaniards reached this land.
The second wonder, sign or omen which the natives beheld was this: the temple of the demon
Huitzilopochtli, in the sector named Tlacateco, caught fire and burned, though no one had set it
afire. The blaze was so great and sudden that wings of flame rushed out of the doors and seemed
to touch the sky. When this occurred, there was great confusion and much loud shouting and
wailing. The people cried: “Mexicanos! Come as quickly as you can! Bring your water jars to put
it out!” Everyone within hearing ran to help, but when they threw water on the fire, it leaped up
with even greater violence, and thus the whole temple burned down.
The third wonder and sign was this: a lightning-bolt fell on a temple of idolatry whose roof was
made of straw. The name of this temple was Tzonmolco, and it was dedicated to their idol
Xiuhtecuhtli.The bolt fell on the temple with neither flash nor thunder, when there was only a
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light rain, like a dew. It was taken as an omen and miracle which boded evil, and all burned
down.
The fourth wonder was this: comets flashed through the sky in the daytime while the sun was
shining. They raced by threes from the west to the east with great haste and violence, shooting
off bright coals and sparks of fire, and trailing such long tails that their splendor filled the sky.
When these portents were seen, the people were terrified, wailing and crying aloud.
The fifth wonder was this: the Lake of Mexico rose when there was no wind. It boiled, and boiled
again, and foamed until it reached a great height, until it washed against half the houses in the
city. House after house collapsed and was destroyed by the waters.
The sixth wonder was this: the people heard in the night the voice of a weeping woman, who
sobbed and sighed and drowned herself in her tears. This woman cried: “0 my sons, we are lost
…!” Or she cried: “0 my sons, where can I hide you…?”
The seventh wonder was this: the men whose work is in the Lake of Mexico-the fishermen and
other boatmen, or the fowlers in their canoes-trapped a dark-feathered bird resembling a crane
and took it to Motecuhzoma so that he might see it. He was in the palace of the Black Hall; the
sun was already in the west. This bird was so unique and marvelous that, no one could
exaggerate its strangeness or describe it well, A round diadem was set in its head in the form of a
clear and transparent mirror, in which could be seen the heavens, the three stars in Taurus and
the stars in the sign of the Gemini. When Motecuhzoma saw this, he was filled with dread and
wonder, for he believed it was a bad omen to see the stars of heaven in the diadem of that bird.
When Motecuhzoma looked into the mirror a second time, he saw a host of people, all armed
like warriors, coming forward in well-ordered ranks. They skirmished and fought with each
other, and were accompanied by strange deer and other creatures.
Therefore, he called for his magicians and fortune-tellers, whose wisdom he trusted, and asked
them what these unnatural visions meant: “My dear and learned friends, I have witnessed great
signs in the diadem of a bird, which was brought to me as something new and marvelous that had
never been seen before. What I witnessed in that diadem, which is pellucid like a mirror, was a
strange host of people rushing toward me across a plain. Now look yourselves, and see what I
have seen.”
But when they wished to advise their lord on what seemed to them so wondrous a thing, and to
give him their judgments, divinations and predictions, the bird suddenly disappeared; and thus
they could not offer him any sure opinion.
The eighth wonder and sign that appeared in Mexico: the natives saw two men merged into one
body-these they called tlacantzolli (“men-squeezed-together”) -and others who had two heads but
only one body. They were brought to the palace of the Black Hall to be shown to the great
Motecuhzoma, but they vanished as soon as he had seen them, and all these signs and others
became invisible. To the natives, these marvels augured their death and ruin, signifying that the
end of the world was coming and that other peoples would be created to inhabit the earth. They
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were so frightened and grief-stricken that they could form no judgment about these things, so
new and strange and never before seen or reported.
The Wonders and Signs Observed in Tlaxcala
Other signs appeared here in this province of Tlaxcala, a little before the arrival of the Spaniards.
The first sign was a radiance that shone in the east every morning three hours before sunrise.
This radiance was in the form of a brilliant white cloud which rose to the sky, and the people
were filled with dread and wonder, not knowing what it could be.
They also saw another marvelous sign: a whirlwind of dust that rose like a sleeve from the top of
the Matlalcueye, now called the Sierra de Tlaxcala.’ This sleeve rose so high that it seemed to
touch the sky. The sign appeared many times throughout a whole year and caused the people
great dread and wonder, emotions which are contrary to their bent and to that of their nation.
They could only believe that the gods had descended from heaven, and the news flew through
the province to the smallest villages. But however this may have been, the arrival of a strange
new people was at last reported and confirmed, especially in Mexico, the head of this empire and
monarchy.
Chapter Two
First Reports of the Spaniards’ Arrival
Introduction
The Cronica Mexicana by Fernando Alvarado Tezozomoc relates how Motecuhzoma consulted
various seers and magicians to learn whether the omens meant an approaching war or some other
crisis. They could not give him a satisfactory answer. However, a poor macehual (common man)
arrived shortly afterward from the Gulf coast, bringing the first word of the appearance of
“towers or small mountains floating on the waves of the sea.” A later report said that the
mountains bore a strange people who “have very light skin, much lighter than ours. They all have
long beards, and their hair comes only to their ears.”
Motecuhzoma was even more distressed by this news than he had been by the omens. Therefore,
he sent messengers and gifts to the strangers, believing that they might be Quetzalcoatl and other
divinities returning to Mexico, as the codices and traditions promised they would.
Motecuhzoma Questions the Magicians
Motecuhzoma summoned the chief officials of all the villages. He told them to search their
villages for magicians and to bring him any they found. The officials returned with a number of
these wizards, who were announced and then brought in to the king’s presence. They knelt before
him, with one knee on the floor, and did him & greatest reverence. He asked them: “Have you
not seen strange omens in the sky or on the earth? In the caves under the earth, or in the lakes
and streams? A weeping woman, or strange men? Visions, or phantasms, or other such things?”
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But the magicians had not seen any of the omens that Motecuhzoma sought to understand, and
therefore could not advise him. He said to his petlacalcatll [head steward): "Take these villains
away, and lock them up in the Cuauhcalco prison. They shall tell me against their will." The next
day he called for his pettacalcatl and said to him: "Tell the magicians to say what they believe:
whether sickness is going to strike, or hunger, or locusts, or storms on the lake, or droughts, and
whether it will rain or not. If war is threatening Mexico, or if there will be sudden deaths, or
deaths caused by wild beasts, they are not to hide it from me. They must also tell me if they have
heard the voice of Cihuacoatl, for when something is to happen, she is the first to predict it, even
long before it takes place."
The magicians answered: "What can we say? The future has already been determined and
decreed in heaven, and Motecuhzoma will behold and suffer a great mystery which must come to
pass in his land. If our king wishes to know more about it, he will know soon enough, for it
comes swiftly. This is what we predict, since he demands that we speak, and since it must surely
take place, he can only wait for it."
The petlacalcatll returned to Motecuhzoma and told him openly what they had said, that what
was to come would come swiftly. Motecuhzoma was astonished to find that this agreed with the
prediction made by Nezahualpi king of Tezcoco.' He said to the petlacalcatl: "Question them
again about this mystery. Ask them if it will come from the sky or the earth, and from what
direction or place it will come, and when this will happen."
The petlacalcatl went back to the prison to question them, but when he entered and unlocked the
doors, he was terrified to discover that they were not there. He returned to Motecuhzoma and
said to him: "My lord, command that I be cut to pieces, or whatever else you wish: for you must
know, my lord, that when I arrived and opened the doors, no one was there. I have special guards
at the prison, trustworthy men who have served me for years, but none of them heard them
escape. I myself believe that they flew away, for they know how to make themselves invisible,
which they do every night, and can fly to the ends of the earth. This is what they must have
done."
Motecuhzoma said: "Let the villains go. Call the chiefs together, and tell them to go to the
villages where the magicians live. Tell them to kill their wives and all their children, and to
destroy their houses." He also ordered many servants to go with them to ransack the houses.
When the chiefs arrived, they killed the women by hanging them with ropes, and the children by
dashing them to pieces against the walls. Then they tore down the houses and even rooted out
their foundations.
A Macebual Arrives from the Gulf Coast
A few days later a macehual [common man] came to the city from Mictlancuauhtla. No one had
sent him, none of the officials; he came of his own accord. He went directly to the palace of
Motecuhzoma and said to him: “Our lord and king, forgive my boldness. I am from
Mictlancuauhtla. When I went to the shores of the great sea, there was a mountain range or small
mountain floating in the midst of the water, and moving here and there without touching the
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shore. My lord, we have never seen the like of this, although we guard the coast and are always
on watch.”
Motecuhzoma thanked him and said: “You may rest now.” The man who brought this news had
no ears, for they had been cut off, and no toes, for they had also been cut off.
Motecuhzoma said to his petlacalcath “Take him to the prison, and guard him well.” Then he
called for a teuctlama cazqui [priest] and appointed him his grand emissary. He said to him: “Go
to CuetlaxtIan, and tell the official in charge of the village that it is true, strange thin have
appeared on the great sea. Tell him to investigate these things himself, so as to learn what they
may signify. Tell him to do this as quickly as he can, and take the ambassador Cuitlalpitoc with
you.”
When they arrived in Cuetlaxtlan, the envoys spoke with the official in charge there, a man
named Pinotl. He listened to them with great attention and then said: “My lords, rest here with
me, and send your attendants out to the shore.” The attendants went out and came back in great
haste to report that it was true: they had seen two towers or small mountains floating on the
waves of the sea. The grand emissary said to Pinotl: “I wish to see these things in person, in
order to learn what they are, for I must testify to our lord as an eyewitness. I will be satisfied
with this and will report to him exactly what I see.” Therefore he went out to the shore with
Cuitlalpitoc, and they saw what was floating there, beyond the edge of the water. They also saw
that seven or eight of the strangers had left it in a small boat and were fishing with hooks and
lines.
The grand emissary and Cuidalpitoc climbed up into a broad- limbed tree. From there they saw
how the strangers were catching fish and how, when they were done, they returned to the ship in
their small boat. The grand emissary said: “Come, Cuitlalpitoc.” They climbed down from the
tree and went back to the village, where they took hasty leave of Pinotl. They returned as swiftly
as possible to the great city of Tenochtitlan, to report to Motecuhzoma what they had observed.
When they reached the city, they went directly to the king’s palace and spoke to him with all due
reverence and humility: “Our lord and king, it is true that strange people have come to the shores
of the great sea. They were fishing from a small boat, some with rods and others with a net. They
fished until late and then they went back to their two great towers and climbed up into them.
There were about fifteen of these people, some with blue jackets, others with red, others with
black or green, and still others with jackets of a soiled color, very ugly, like our ichtilmatli. There
were also a few without jackets. On their heads they wore red kerchiefs, or bonnets of a fine
scarlet color, and some wore large round hats like small comales, which must have been
sunshades. They have very light skin, much lighter than ours, They all have long beards, and
their hair comes only to their ears.”
Motecuhzoma was downcast when he heard this report, and did not speak a word.
Preparations Ordered by Motecubzoma
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After a long silence, Motecuhzoma finally spoke: “You are the chiefs of my own house and
palace and I can place more faith and credit in you than in anyone else because you have always
told me the truth. Go with the petlacalcati and bring me the man who is locked up in the jail, the
macehual who came as a messenger from the coast.” They went to the jail, but when they opened
the doors, they could not find him anywhere. They hurried back to tell Motecuhzom \a, who was
even more astonished and terrified than they were. He said: “It is a natural thing, for almost
everyone is a magician. But hear what I tell you now, and if you reveal anything of what I am
about to command, will bury you under my halls, and your wives and children will be killed, and
your property seized. Your houses will be destroyed to the bottom of their foundations, until the
water seeps up, and your parents and all your kin will be put to death. Now bring me in secret
two of the best artists among the silversmiths, and two lapidaries who are skillful at working
emeralds.”‘
They went and returned and said to him: “Our lord, here are the craftsmen you commanded us to
bring you.”Motecuhzoma said: “Tell them to enter.” They entered, and he said to them: “Come
here to me, my fathers. You are to know that I have called for you to have you make certain
objects. But take care that you do not reveal this to anyone, for if you do, it will mean the ruin of
your houses to their foundations, and the loss of your goods, and death to yourselves, your wives,
your children and your kin, for all shall die. Each of you is to make two objects, and you are to
make them in my presence, here in secret in this palace.”
He told one craftsman: “Make a throat-band or chain of gold, with links four fingers wide and
very thin, and let each piece and medallion bear rich emeralds in the center and at the sides, like
earrings, two by two. Then make a pair of gold bracelets, with chains of gold hanging from them.
And do this with all the haste in the world.”
He ordered the other craftsman to make two great fans with rich feathers, in the center of one
side a half-moon of gold, on the other a gold sun, both well burnished so that they would shine
from far away. He also told him to make two gold armlets rich with feathers. And he ordered
each of the lapidaries to make two double bracelets-that is, for both wrists and both ankles-of
gold set with fine emeralds.
Then he ordered his petlacalcatltl to bring in secret many canutos of gold, and plumage of the
noblest sort, and many emeralds and other rich stones of the finest quality. All of this was given
to the artisans and in a few days they had finished their work. One morning, after the king had
risen, they sent a palace hunchback to the king Motecuhzoma, to beg him to come to their
workroom.
When he entered, they showed him great reverence and said: “Our lord, the work is finished.
Please inspect it.” Motecuhzoma saw that the work was excellent, and he told them that all had
been done to his satisfaction and pleasure. He called for his petlacalcatl and said: “Give each of
these, my grandfathers, a portion of various rich cloths; and huipiles and skirts for my
grandmothers; and cotton, chiles, corn, squash seeds and beans, the same amount to each.” And
with this the craftsmen returned to their homes contented….
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Chapter Three
The Messengers’ journeys
Introduction
The native documents-principally those by Sahagun’s informants- describe the various journeys
made by Motecuhzoma’s messengers to the Gulf coasts where the strangers had appeared. The
texts describing the instructions that Motecuhzoma gave to his envoys are presented first. These
show clearly how the Nahuas attempted to explain the coming of the Spaniards by a projection of
earlier ideas: they assumed that the new arrivals were Quetzalcoatl and other dieties.
Then the documents relate how the messengers reached the coast and were received by the
Spaniards, to whom they brought gifts from Motecuhzoma. The descriptions of the gifts offered
to Cortes, and of his successful attempt to frighten the messengers by firing an arquebus in front
of them, are especially interesting.
The third part of this chapter deals with the messengers’ return to Tenochtitlan and the
information they brought back to Motecuhzoma about the Spaniards, their firearms, the animals
they rode (a species of huge “deer,” but without horns), their mastiff dogs and so on.
All the texts in this chapter are from the Codex Florentino.
Motecuhzoma Instructs His Messengers
Motecuhzoma then gave orders to Pinotl of Cuetlaxtdan and to other officials. He said to them:
“Give out this order: a watch is to be kept along all the shores at Nahuatl, Tuztlan,
Mictlancuauhtla, wherever the strangers appear.” The officials left at once and gave orders for
the watch to be kept.
Motecuhzoma now called his chiefs together: Tlilpotonque, the serpent woman, Cuappiatzin, the
chief of the house of arrows, Quetzalaztatzin, the keeper of the chalk, and Hecateupatiltzin, the
chief of the refugees from the south. He told them the news that had been brought to him and
showed them the objects he had ordered made. He said: “We all admire these blue turquoises,
and they must be guarded well. The whole treasure must be guarded well. If anything is lost,
your houses will be destroyed and your children killed, even those who are still in the womb.”
The year 13 -Rabbit now approached its end. And when it was about to end, they appeared, they
were seen again. The report of their coming was brought to Motecuhzoma, who immediately sent
out messengers. It was as if he thought the new arrival was our prince Quetzalcoatl.
This is what he felt in his heart: He has appeared! He has come back! He will come here, to the
place of his throne and canopy, for that is what he promised when be departed!
Motecuhzoma sent five messengers to greet the strangers and to bring them gifts. They were led
by the priest in charge of the sanctuary of Yohualichan. The second was from Tepoztlan; the
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third, from Tizatlan; the fourth, from Huehuetlan; and the fifth, from Mictlan the Great. He said
to them: “Come forward, my Jaguar Knights, come forward. It is said that our lord has returned
to this land. Go to meet him. Go to hear him. Listen well to what he tells you; listen and
remember.”
The Gifts Sent to the New Arrivals
Motecuhzoma also said to the messengers: “Here is what you are to bring our lord. This is the
treasure of Quetzalcoatl. This treasure was the god’s finery: a serpent mask inlaid with turquoise,
a decoration for the breast made of quetzal feathers, a collar woven in the petatillo style with a
gold disk in the center, and a shield decorated with gold and mother-of-pearl and bordered with
quetzal feathers with a pendant of the same feathers.
There was also a mirror like those which the ritual dancers wore on their buttocks. The reverse of
this mirror was a turquoise mosaic: it was encrusted and adorned with turquoises. And there was
a spear-thrower inlaid with turquoise, a bracelet of chalchihuites hung with little gold bells and
pair of sandals as black as obsidian.
Motecuhzoma also gave them the finery of Tezcatlipoca. This finery was: a helmet in the shape
of a cone, yellow with gold and set with many stars, a number of earrings adorned with little gold
bells, a fringed and painted vest with feathers as delicate as foam and a blue cloak known as “the
ringing bell,” which reached to the ears and was fastened with a knot.
There was also a collar of fine shells to cover the breast. This collar was adorned with the finest
snail shells, which seemed to escape from the edges. And there was a mirror to be hung in back,
a set of little gold bells and a pair of white sandals.
Then Motecuhzoma gave them the finery of Tlaloc.This finery was: a headdress made of quetzal
feathers, as green as if it were growing, with an ornament of gold and mother-of-pearl, earrings
in the form of serpents, made of chaicbibuites, a vest adorned with chalchihuites and a collar also
of chalchihuites, woven in the petatillo style, with a disk of gold.
There was also a serpent wand inlaid with turquoise, a mirror to be hung in back, with little bells,
and a cloak bordered with red rings.
Then Motecuhzoma gave them the finery of Quetzalcoatl. This finery was: a diadem made of
jaguar skin and pheasant feathers and adorned with a large green stone, round turquoise earrings
with curved pendants of shell and gold, a collar of chalchihuites in the petatillo style with a disk
of gold in the center, a cloak with red borders, and little gold bells for the feet.
There was also a golden shield, pierced in the middle, with quetzal feathers around the rim and a
pendant of the same feathers, the crooked staff of Ehecatl with a cluster of white stones at the
crook, and his sandals of fine soft rubber.
These were the many kinds of adornments that were known as “divine adornments.” They were
placed in the possession of the messengers to be taken as gifts of welcome along with many
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other objects, such as a golden snail shell and a golden diadem. All these objects were packed
into great baskets; they were loaded into panniers for the long journey.
Then Motecuhzoma gave the messengers his final orders. He said to them: “Go now, without
delay. Do reverence to our lord the god. Say to him: ‘Your deputy, Motecuhzoma, has sent us to
you. Here are the presents with which he welcomes you home to Mexico.”
The Messengers Contact the Spaniards
When they arrived at the shore of the sea, they were taken in canoes to Xicalanco. They placed
the baskets in the same canoes in which they rode, in order to keep them under their personal
vigilance. From Xicalanco they followed the coast until they sighted the ships of the strangers.
When they came up to the ships, the strangers asked them: “Who are you? Where are you from?”
“We have come from the City of Mexico.”
The strangers said: “You may have come from there, or you may not have. Perhaps you are only
inventing it. Perhaps you are mocking us.” But their hearts were convinced; they were satisfied
in their hearts. They lowered a hook from the bow of the ship, and then a ladder, and the
messengers came aboard.
One by one they did reverence to Cortes by touching the ground before him with their lips. They
said to him: “If the god will deign to hear us, your deputy Motecuhzoma has sent us to render
you homage. He has the City of Mexico in his care. He says: ‘The god is weary.”‘
Then they arrayed the Captain in the finery they had brought him as presents. With great care
they fastened the turquoise mask in place, the mask of the god with its crossband of quetzal
feathers. A golden earring hung down on either side of this mask. They dressed him in the
decorated vest and the collar woven in the petatillo style-the collar of chalchihuites, with a disk
of gold in the center.
Next they fastened the mirror to his hips, dressed him in the cloak known as “the ringing bell”
and adorned his feet with the greaves used by the Huastecas, which were set with chalchihuites
and hung with little gold bells. In his hand they placed the shield with its fringe and pendant of
quetzal feathers, its ornaments of gold and mother-of-pearl. Finally they set before him the pair
of black sandals. As for the other objects of divine finery, they only laid them out for him to see.
The Captain asked them: “And is this all? Is this your gift of welcome? Is this how you greet
people?”
They replied: “This is all, our lord. This is what we have brought you.”
Cortes Frightens the Messengers
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Then the Captain gave orders, and the messengers were chained by the feet and by the neck.
When this had been done, the great cannon was fired off. The messengers lost their senses and
fainted away. They fell down side by side and lay where they had fallen. But the Spaniards
quickly revived them: they lifted them up, gave them wine to drink and then offered them food.
The Captain said to them: “I have heard that the Mexicans are very great warriors, very brave
and terrible. If a Mexican is fighting alone, he knows how to retreat, turn back, rush forward and
conquer, even if his opponents are ten or even twenty. But my heart is not convinced. I want to
see it for myself. I want to find out if you are truly that strong and brave.”
Then he gave them swords, spears and leather shields. He said: “It will take place very early, at
daybreak. We are going to fight each other in pairs, and in this way we will learn the truth. We
will see who falls to the ground! “
They said to the Captain: “Our lord, we were not sent here for this by your deputy
Motecuhzoma! We have come on an exclusive mission, to offer you rest and repose and to bring
you presents. What the lord desires is not within our warrant. If we were to do this, it might
anger Motecuhzoma, and he would surely put us to death.”
The Captain replied: “No, it must take place. I want to see for myself, because even in Castile
they say you are famous as brave warriors. Therefore, eat an early meal. I will eat too. Good
cheer!”
With these words he sent them away from the ship. They were scarcely into their canoes when
they began to paddle furiously. Some of them even paddled with their hands, so fierce was the
anxiety burning in their souls. They said to each other: ” My captains, paddle with all your
might! Faster, faster! Nothing must happen to us here! Nothing must happen …”
They arrived in great haste at Xicalanco, took a hurried meal there, and then pressed on until
they came to Tecpantlayacac. From there they rushed ahead and arrived in Cuetlaxtlan. As on the
previous journey, they stopped there to rest. When they were about to depart, the village official
said to them: “Rest for at least a day! At least catch your breath! “
They said: “No, we must keep on! We must report to our king, Motecuhzoma. We will tell him
what we have seen, and it is a terrifying thing. Nothing like it has ever been seen before! ” Then
they left in great haste and continued to the City of Mexico. They entered the city at night, in the
middle of the night.
Motecuhzoma Awaits Word from the Messengers
While the messengers were away, Motecuhzomaa could neither sleep nor eat, and no one could
speak with him. He thought that everything he did was in vain, and he sighed almost every
moment. He was lost in despair, in the deepest gloom and sorrow. Nothing could comfort him,
nothing could calm him, nothing could give him any pleasure.
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He said: “What will happen to us? Who will outlive it? Ah, in other times I was contented, but
now I have death in my heart! My heart bums and suffers, as if it were drowned in spices … ! But
will our lord come here? “
Then he gave orders to the watchmen, to the men who guarded the palace: “Tell me, even if I am
sleeping: ‘The messengers have come back from the sea.”‘ But when they went to tell him, he
immediately said: “hey are not to report to me here. I will receive them in the House of the
Serpent. Tell them to go there.” And he gave this order: “Two captives are to be painted with
chalk.”
The messengers went to the House of the Serpent, and Motecuhzoma arrived. The two captives
were then sacrificed before his eyes: their breasts were torn open, and the messengers were
sprinkled with their blood. This was done because the messengers had completed a difficult
mission: they had seen the gods, their eyes had looked on their faces. They had even conversed
with the gods!
The Messengers’ Report
When the sacrifice was finished, the messengers reported to the king. They told him how they
had made the journey, and what they had seen, and what food the strangers ate. Motecuhzoma
was astonished and terrified by their report, and the description of the strangers’ food astonished
him above all else.
He was also terrified to learn how the cannon roared, how its noise resounded, how it caused one
to faint and grow deaf. The messengers told him: “A thing like a ball of stone comes out of its
entrails: it comes out shooting sparks and raining fire. The smoke that comes out with it has a
pestilent odor, like that of rotten mud. This odor penetrates even to the brain and causes the
greatest discomfort. If the cannon is aimed against a mountain, the mountain splits and cracks
open. If it is aimed against a tree, it shatters the tree into splinters. This is a most unnatural sight,
as if the tree had exploded from within.”
The messengers also said: “Their trappings and arms are all made of iron. They dress in iron and
wear iron casques on their heads. Their swords are iron; their bows are iron; their shields are
iron; their spears are iron. Their deer carry them on their backs wherever they wish to go. These
deer, our lord, are as tall as the roof of a house.
“The strangers’ bodies are completely covered, so that only their faces can be seen. Their skin is
white, as if it were made of lime. They have yellow hair, though some of them have black. Their
beards are long and yellow, and their moustaches are also yellow. Their hair is curly, with very
fine strands.
“As for their food, it is like human food. It is large and white, and not heavy. It is something like
straw, but with the taste of a cornstalk, of the pith of a cornstalk. It is a little sweet, as if it were
flavored with honey; it tastes of honey, it is sweet- tasting food.
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Their dogs are enormous, with flat ears and long, dangling tongues. The color of their eyes is a
burning yellow; their eyes flash fire and shoot off sparks. Their bellies are hollow, their flanks
long and narrow. They are tireless and very powerful. They bound here and there panting, with
their tongues hanging out. And they are spotted like an ocelot.
When Motecuhzoma heard this report, he was filled with terror. It was as if his heart had fainted,
as if it had shriveled. It was as if he were conquered by despair.
Chapter Four
Motecuhzoma’s Terror and Apathy
Introduction
When Motecuhzoma heard the messengers’ report, with its description of strange animals and
other marvels, his thoughts were even more disturbed. Sahagun’s informants tell us how he sent
out his magicians and warlocks in the hope that they could harm the Spaniards with their magic,
or at least prevent them from approaching Tenochtitlan. In his uncertainty about the nature of the
strangers-he still thought they might be gods-he also sent out captives to be sacrificed in their
presence. The informants give us a vivid account of the Spaniards’ reactions to this rite.
The magicians failed completely in their attempts either to harm the Spaniards or to drive them
away. The messengers reported all this to Motecuhzoma in Tenochtitlan. Both he and his people
lived through days of intense fear, because it was now certain that the “gods” intended to march
on the Aztec capital. The informants offer what could almost be called a psychological portrait of
Motecuhzoma as he struggled with his fears and uncertainties. Finally we see how the grand
tlatoani (king) resigned himself and waited for the inevitable.
The texts in this chapter are from the Codex Florentino.
Motecuhzoma Sends Out Wizards and Magicians
It was at this time that Motecuhzoma sent out a deputation. He sent out his most gifted men, his
prophets and wizards, as many as he could gather. He also sent out his noblest and bravest
warriors. They had to take their provisions with them on the journey: live hens’ and hens’ eggs
and tortillas. They also took whatever the strangers might request, or whatever might please
them.
Motecuhzorna also sent captives to be sacrificed, because the strangers might wish to drink their
blood. The envoys sacrificed these captives in the presence of the strangers, but when the white
men saw this done, they were filled with disgust and loathing. They spat on the ground, or wiped
away their tears, or closed their eyes and shook their heads in abhorrence.
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They refused to eat the food that was sprinkled with blood, because it reeked of it; it sickened
them, as if the blood had rotted.
Motecuhzoma ordered the sacrifice because he took the Spaniards to be gods; he believed in
them and worshiped them as deities. That is why they were called “Gods who have come from
heaven.” As for the Negroes, they were called “soiled gods.”
Then the strangers ate the tortillas, the eggs and the hens, and fruit of every variety: guavas,
avocados, prickly pears and the many other kinds that grow here. There was food for the “deer”
also: reed shoots and green grasses.
Motecuhzoma had sent the magicians to learn what sort of people the strangers might be, but
they were also to see if they could work some charm against them, or do them some mischief.
They might be able to direct a harmful wind against them, or cause them to break out in sores, or
injure them in some way. Or they might be able to repeat some enchanted word, over and over,
that would cause them to fall sick, or die, or return to their own land.
The magicians carried out their mission against the Spaniards, but they failed completely. They
could not harm them in any way whatever.
Motecuhzoma Learns of the Magicians’ Failure
Therefore they hastened back to the city, to tell Motecuhzoma what the strangers were like and
how invulnerable they were. They said to him: “Our lord, we are no match for them: we are mere
nothings! ” Motecuhzoma at once gave out orders: he commanded the officials and all the chiefs
and captains, under the threat of death, to take the utmost pains to learn
The Anxiety of Motecuhzoma and His People
Motecuhzoma was distraught and bewildered; he was filled with terror, not knowing what would
happen to the city. The people were also terrified, debating the news among themselves. There
were meetings and arguments and gossip in the street; there was weeping and lamenting. The
people were downcast: they went about with their heads bowed down and greeted each other
with tears.
But there were some who attempted to encourage their neighbors, and the children were caressed
and comforted by their fathers and mothers. The chiefs said to Motecuhzoma, to fortify his heart:
“The strangers are accompanied by a woman from this land, who speaks our Nahuatl tongue. She
is called La Malinche, and she is from Teticpac. They found her there on the coast ……
It was also at this time that the Spaniards asked so many questions about Motecuhzoma. They
asked the villagers: “Is he a young man, or mature, or in his old age? Is he still vigorous, or does
he feel himself to be growing old? Is he an old man now, with white hair?” The villagers replied:
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“He is a mature man, slender rather than stout, or even thin. Or not thin but lean, with a fine
straight figure.”
Motecuhzoma Thinks of Fleeing
When Motecuhzoma heard that they were inquiring about his person, and when he learned that
the “gods” wished to see him face to face, his heart shrank within him and he was filled with
anguish. He wanted to run away and hide; he thought of evading the “gods,” of escaping to hide
in a cave.
He spoke of this to certain trusted counselors who were not faint-hearted, whose hearts were still
firm and resolute. They said: “There is the Place of the Dead, the House of the Sun, the Land of
Tlaloc, or the Temple of Cintli. You should go to one or another, to whichever you prefer.”
Motecuhzoma knew what he desired: to go to the Temple of Cintli. And his desire was made
known; it was revealed to the people.
But he could not do it. He could not run away, could not go into hiding. He had lost his strength
and his spirit, and, could do nothing. The magicians’ words had overwhelmed his heart;. they had
vanquished his heart and thrown him into confusion, so that now he was weak and listless and
too uncertain to make a decision.
Therefore he did nothing but wait. He did nothing but resign himself and wait for them to come.
He mastered his heart at last, and waited for whatever was to happen.
Chapter Five
The Spaniards March on Tlaxcala and Cholula
Introduction
Despite the efforts of Motecuhzoma’s envoys to keep the Spaniards from approaching
Tenochtitlan, Cortes decided to march inland. The two indigenous accounts presented in this
chapter the first by Sahagun’s informants, the second by the mestizo Munoz Camargo-describe
the arrival of the Spaniards in Tlaxcala and Cholula. The account by the informants mentions the
first battle between Spaniards and Indians (a group of Otomi Indians from Tecoac), after which
the Tlaxcaltecas decided to receive the strangers in peace. As soon as the Spaniards arrived, the
Tlaxcaltecas began to intrigue against nearby Cholula and the Aztecs.
There are two separate versions of what led the Spaniards to massacre the Indians in Cholula.
According to Sahagun’s informants, the massacre was inspired by the intrigues of the
Tlaxcaltecas, whose “souls burned with hatred for the people of Cholula.” According to Munoz
Camargo, the Cholultecas brought their own destruction on themselves by not surrendering to
Cortes and by treacherously murdering the envoy from Tlaxcala, Patlahuatzin, who advised them
to form an alliance with the Spaniards. This second version may have been invented by the
Tlaxcaltecas to excuse their part in the massacre; at least, there is no corroboration for it in either
the Historia of Bernal Diaz del Castillo or the Cartas I de relacion of Cortes.
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The Spaniards March Inland
(From the Codex Florentino by Sahagun’s informants)
At last they came. At last they began to march toward us.
A man from Cempoala who was known as the Tlacochcalcatl [Chief of the House of Arrows],
was the first official to welcome them as they entered our lands and cities. This man spoke
Nahuatl. He showed them the best routes and the shortest ways; he guided and advised them,
traveling at the head of the party
When they came to Tecoac, in the land of the Tlaxcaltecas, they found it was inhabited by
Otomies. The Otomies came out to meet them in battle array; they greeted the strangers with
their shields.
But the strangers conquered the Otomies of Tecoac; they utterly destroyed them. They divided
their ranks, fired the cannons at them, attacked them with their swords and shot them with their
crossbows. Not just a few, but all of them, perished in the battle.
And when Tecoac had been defeated, the Tlaxcaltecas soon heard the news; they learned what
had taken place there. They felt premonitions of death: terror overwhelmed them, and they were
filled with foreboding.
Therefore the chiefs assembled; the captains met together in a council. They talked about what
had happened, and said: “What shall we do? Shall we go out to meet them? The Otomi is a brave
warrior, but he was helpless against them: they scorned him as a mere nothing! They destroyed
the poor macehual with a look, with a glance of their eyes! We should go over to their side: we
should make friends with them and be their allies. If not, they will destroy us too. . “
The Arrival at Tlaxcala
Therefore the lords of Tlaxcala went out to meet them, bringing many things to eat: hens and
hens’ eggs and the finest tortillas. They said to the strangers: “Our lords, you are weary.”
The strangers replied: “Where do you live? Where are you from? “
They said: “We are from Tlaxcala. You have come here, you have entered our land. We are from
Tlaxcala; our city is the City of the Eagle, Tlaxcala.” (For in ancient times it was called Texcala,
and its people were known as Texcaltecas)
Then they guided them to the city; they brought them there and invited them to enter. They paid
them great honors, attended to their every want, joined with them as allies and even gave them
their daughters.
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The Spaniards asked: “Where is the City of Mexico? Is it far from here? “
They said: “No, it is not far, it is only a three-day march. And it is a great city. The Aztecs are
very brave. They are great warriors and conquerors and have defeated their neighbors on every
side.”
Intrigues Against Cholula
At this time the Tlaxcaltecas were enemies of Cholula. They feared the Cholultecas; they envied
and cursed them; their souls burned with hatred for the people of Cholula. This is why they
brought certain rumors to Cortes, so that he would destroy them. They said to him: “Cholula is
our enemy. It is an evil city. The people are as brave as the Aztecs and they are the Aztecs’
friends.”
When the Spaniards heard this, they marched against Cholula. They were guided and
accompanied by the Tlaxcaltecas and the chiefs from Cempoala, and they all marched in battle
array.’
The Massacre at Cholula
When they arrived, the Tlaxcaltecas and the men of Cholula called to each other and shouted
greetings. An assembly was held in the courtyard of the god, but when they had all gathered
together, the entrances were closed, so that there was no way of escaping.
Then the sudden slaughter began: knife strokes, and sword strokes, and death. The people of
Cholula had not foreseen it, had not suspected it. They faced the Spaniards without weapons,
without their swords or their shields. The cause of the slaughter was treachery. They died
blindly, without knowing why, because of the lies of the Tlaxcaltecas.
And when this had taken place, word of it was brought to Motecuhzoma. The messengers came
and departed, journeying back and forth between Tenochtitlan and Cholula. The common people
were terrified by the news; they could do nothing but tremble with fright. It was as if the earth
trembled beneath them, or as if the world were spinning before their eyes, as it spins during a fit
of vertigo….
When the massacre at Cholula was complete, the strangers set out again toward the City of
Mexico. They came in battle array, as conquerors, and the dust rose in whirlwinds on the roads.
Their spears glinted in the sun, and their pennons fluttered like bats. They made a loud clamor as
they marched, for their coats of mail and their weapons clashed and rattled. Some of them were
dressed in glistening iron from head to foot; they terrified everyone who saw them.
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Their dogs came with them, running ahead of the column. They raised their muzzles high; they
lifted their muzzles to the wind. They raced on before with saliva dripping from their jaws.
Negotiations Before the Battle
(From the Historia de Tlaxcala by Diego Munoz Camargo)
From this time forward, the Spaniards had no other purpose than to raise soldiers against the
Culhuas Mexicanos. They
did this within a very short time, so as to give them no opportunity to form an alliance with the
Tlaxcaltecas. And to avoid bad thoughts, as well as other new incidents and proposals, Cortes
saw to it that his new friends and confederates did not leave his side, using his wits as always, as
an astute leader, to take advantage of a favorable situation.
When the ranks were formed, the Spanish troops and the Tlaxcaltecas marched out in good
military order, with enough supplies for their great undertaking and with many important and
famous captains, all skilled in warfare according to their ancient customs and practices. These
captains were Piltecuhtli, Acxoxecatl, Tecpanecatl, Cahuecahua, Cocomitecuhtli, Quauhtotohua,
Textlipitl and many others; but because they were so many, with such a variety of names, the
others are not set down here, only the most outstanding, who were always loyal to Cortes until
the end of his conquest.
The first invasion took place at Cholula, which was governed and ruled by two lords, Tlaquiach
and Tlalchiac (for the lords who succeeded to that command were always known by those
names, which mean “Lord of what is above” and “Lord of what is below”).
Once they entered the province of Cholula, the Spaniards quickly destroyed that city because of
the great provocations given by its inhabitants. So many Cholultecas were killed in this invasion
that the news raced through the land as far as the City of Mexico. There it caused the most
horrible fright and consternation, for it was also known that the Tlaxcaltecas had allied
themselves with the “gods” (as the Spaniards were called in all parts of this New World, for want
of another name).
The Cholultecas had placed such confidence in their idol Quetzalcoatl that they believed no
human power could defeat or harm them. They thought they would be able to vanquish us in a
very short time-first, because the Spaniards were so few, and second, because the Tlaxcaltecas
had brought them against Cholula by deceit. Their faith in the idol was so complete that they
believed it would ravage their enemies with the fire and thunder of heaven, and drown them in a
vast flood of water.
This is what they believed, and they proclaimed it in loud voices: “Let the strangers come! We
will see if they are so powerful! Our god Quetzalcoatl is here with us, and they can never defeat
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him. Let them come, the weaklings: we are waiting to see them, and we laugh at their stupid
delusions. They are fools or madmen if they trust in these sodomites from Tlaxcala, who are
nothing but their women. And let the hirelings come, too: they have sold themselves in their
terror. Look at the scum of Tlaxcala, the cowards of Tlaxcala, the guilty ones! They were
conquered by the City of Mexico, and now they bring strangers to defend them! How could you
change so soon? How could you put yourselves into the hands of these foreign savages? Oh, you
frightened beggars, you have lost the immortal glory that was won by your heroes, who sprang
from the pure blood of the ancient Teochichimecas, the founders of your nation. What will
become of you, you traitors? We are waiting, and you will see how our god Quetzalcoatl
punishes his foes! “
They shouted these and other similar insults, because they believed that the enemy would surely
be consumed by bolts of fire which would fall from heaven, and that great rivers of water would
pour from the temples of their idols to drown both the Tlaxcaltecas and the Spanish soldiers.
This caused the Tlaxcaltecas no little fear and concern, for they believed that all would happen as
the Cholultecas predicted, and the priests of the temple of Quetzalcoatl proclaimed it at the top of
their voices.
But when the Tlaxcaltecas heard the Spaniards call out to St. James, and saw them burn the
temples and hurl the idols to the ground, profaning them with great zeal and determination, and
when they also saw that the idols were powerless, that no flames fell and no rivers poured outthen
they understood the deception and knew it was all falsehoods and lies.
Thus encouraged, they grew so brave that the slaughter and havoc increased beyond imagining.
Our friends also became well aware of the Spaniards’ courage; they never again plotted any
crimes, but were guided by the divine order, which was to serve Our Lord by conquering this
land and rescuing it from the power of the devil.
Before the battle began, the city of Tlaxcala sent messengers and ambassadors to Cholula to ask
for peace and to say that they were marching not against the Cholultecas but against the Culhuas,
or Culhuacanenses Mexicanos. (They were called Culhuas, it is said, because they had come
from the region of Culhuacan in the West; and Mexicanos, because the city which they founded
and made supreme was called Mexico.) The envoys told the Cholultecas that they were marching
under the command of Cortes and that they came desiring peace. They said that the people of
Cholula should fear no harm from the bearded strangers, for these were a very great and noble
people who only sought their friendship. Thus they begged the Cholultecas as friends to receive
the strangers in peace, because they would be well used by them and suffer no ill treatment, but
they also warned them not to anger the white men, for they were a very warlike, daring and
valiant people, who carried superior weapons made of white metal. They said this because there
was no iron among the natives, only copper.
They also said that the strangers brought arms which could shoot fire, and wild animals on
leashes; that they were dressed and shod in iron, and had powerful crossbows, and lions and
ounces so ferocious that they ate people (meaning the fierce greyhounds and mastiffs which the
Spaniards had brought with them); and that against this might the Cholultecas could not prevail,
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or even defend themselves, if they angered the “gods” and did not surrender peacefully, as they
should do to avoid greater harm. And they counseled them as friends to act in this manner.
Death of the Envoy from Tlaxcala
But the Cholultecas paid no attention to these words, preferring to die rather than surrender.
Rejecting the good counsel of the Tlaxcaltecas, they flayed the face of Patlahuatzin, the
ambassador, a man of great repute and valor. They did the same to his arms, which they flayed to
the elbows, and they cut his hands at the wrists so that they dangled. In this cruel fashion they
sent him away, saying: “Go back, and tell the Tlaxcaltecas and those other beggars, or gods, or
whatever they are, that this is how we invite them to come. This is the answer we send them.”
The ambassador returned in great agony, victim of an outrage that caused much horror and grief
in the republic, because he was one of the worthiest and most handsome men of this land. He
died in the service of his homeland and republic, where his fame is eternal among his people,
who keep his memory alive in their songs and sayings.
The Tlaxcaltecas were enraged at this inhuman treatment of Patlahuatzin. They took such
unthinkable cruelty as a great affront, since all ambassadors were traditionally respected and
honored by foreign kings and lords, to whom they reported the treaties, wars and other events
that took place in these provinces and kingdoms. Therefore they said to Cortes: “Most valiant
lord, we wish to accompany you, in order to seek vengeance against Cholula for its insolent
wickedness, and to conquer and destroy that city and its province. A people so obstinate and
vicious, so evil and tyrannous, should not remain alive. And if there were no other cause than
this, they would deserve eternal punishment, for they have not thanked us for our good counsel,
but have scorned and despised us because of our love for you.”
The valiant Cortes answered them with a stern face: “Have no fear. I promise you revenge.” And
he kept this promise, waging a cruel war in which vast multitudes were slaughtered, as is
recorded in the chronicles.
The Cholultecas said that their foes would all be drowned by their idol Quetzalcoatl. This was
the most venerated idol among the many that were worshipped in this land, and its temple at
Cholula was considered a shrine of the gods. They said that when the crust was scraped from a
portion of the limed surface of the temple, water gushed out. To save themselves from drowning,
they sacrificed children of two or three years of age and mixed their blood with lime to make a
kind of cement with which to stop up the springs and founts. They said that if they were ever in
danger during a war with the white gods and the Tlaxcaltecas, they would break open all the
mortared surfaces, from which a flood of water would pour forth to drown their enemies. And
when they saw how hard pressed they were, they set to work.
The Destruction of Cholula
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But none of their expectations was fulfilled, and they lost all hope. Of those who died in the
battle of Cholula, the greater number hurled themselves from the temple pyramid in their despair
and they also hurled the idol of Quetzalcoatl headfirst from the pyramid, for this form of suicide
had always been a custom among them. They were as rebellious and contemptuous as any stiffnecked,
ungovernable people, and it was their custom to die in a manner contrary to that of other
nations that is, to die headlong. In the end, the greater part of them died in despair, by killing
themselves.
When the battle of Cholula was finished, the Cholultecas understood and believed that the God
of the white men, who were His most powerful sons, was more potent than their own. Our
friends the Tlaxcaltecas, seeing themselves in the very thick of that battle and massacre, called
upon St. James the Apostle, shouting his name in loud voices: “Santiago! ” And from that day to
this, when they are in some difficulty or danger, the Tlaxcaltecas invoke the saint.
They made use of a very good counsel given them by Cortes, so that they could be distinguished
and would not die among the enemy by mistake. Since their weapons and emblems and those of
the enemy were almost the same, with only the slightest differences, and since there was such a
great multitude of people on both sides, some means of identification was a necessity. Otherwise,
in the press of battle, they would have killed their own warriors without knowing it. Therefore
they wore plaited garlands of feather-grass on their heads, in order to recognize each other; and
the counsel proved to be of considerable value.
When Cholula had been stormed and destroyed, and a great host of people killed and plundered,
our armies marched forward again, causing terror wherever they went, until the news of the
destruction spread through the whole land. The people were astonished to hear such strange
reports, and to learn how the Cholultecas were defeated and slain in so short a time, and how
their idol Quetzalcoatl had not served them in any way.
Chapter Six
The Gifts of Gold: The God Tezcatlipoca Appears
Introduction
After the destruction of Cholula, the Spaniards continued to march toward the Valley of Mexico,
accompanied by their allies from Tlaxcala. The texts by Sahagun’s informants, from which the
passages in this chapter are taken, describe two incidents of particular interest.
When the army was among the volcanoes, in what the Indians called the Eagle Pass, it was met
by new envoys from Motecuhzoma, headed by Tzihuacpopocatzin. The envoys presented many
objects of gold to the strangers, and then observed their reactions to the gifts: “The Spaniards
burst into smiles…. They hungered like pigs for that gold. – . .”
Second, the texts report the deceit of Tzihuacpopocatzin, who attempted-apparently on
Motecuhzoma’s orders-to pass himself off as Motecuhzoma. This effort failed, and another series
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of envoys was sent out-magicians again-in the hope of stopping the conquistadors. But the
wizards retired before the mysterious presence of a pretended drunkard, who foretold the ruin of
Mexico and showed them portents. They thought the god Tezcatlipoca had appeared to them, and
they hurried back to Tenochtitlan to tell Motecuhzoma. The great Aztec tiatoani was even more
depressed than before and waited fatalistically for what was to come.
The Spaniards See the Objects of Gold
Then Motecuhzoma dispatched various chiefs. Tzihuac popocatzin was at their head, and he took
with him a great many of his representatives. they went out to meet the Spaniards in the vicinity
of Popocatepetl and lztactepetl, there in the Eagle Pass.
They gave the “gods” ensigns of gold, and ensigns of quetzal feathers, and golden necklaces.
And when they were given these presents, the Spaniards burst into smiles; their eyes shone with
pleasure; they were delighted by them. They picked up the gold and fingered it like monkeys;
they seemed to be transported by joy, as if their hearts were illumined and made new.
The truth is that they longed and lusted for gold. Their bodies swelled with greed, and their
hunger was ravenous; they hungered like pigs for that gold. They snatched at the golden ensigns,
waved them from side to side and examined every inch of them. They were like one who speaks
a barbarous tongue: everything they said was in a barbarous tongue.
Tzihuacpopocatzin Pretends to Be Motecuhzoma
When they saw Tzihuacpopocatzin, they asked: “Is this Motccuhzoma, by any chance? ” They
asked this of their allies, the liars from Tlaxcala and Cempoala, their shrewd and deceitful
confederates.
They replied: “He is not Motecuhzoma, our lords. He is his envoy Tzihuacpopocatzin.”
The Spaniards asked him: “Are you Motecuhzoma, by any chance?”
“Yes,” he said, “I am your servant. I am Motecuhzoma.”
But the allies said: “You fool! Why try to deceive us?
Who do you think we are?” And they said:
You cannot deceive us; you cannot make fools of us. You cannot frighten us; you cannot blind
our eyes. You cannot stare us down; we will not look away. You cannot bewitch our eyes or turn
them aside. You cannot dim our eyes or make them swoon. You cannot fill them with dust or
shut them with slime.
“You are not Motecuhzoma: he is there in his city. He cannot hide from us. Where can he go?
Can he fly away like a bird? Can he tunnel the earth?
Can he burrow into a mountain, to hide inside it?
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We are coming to see him, to meet him face to face.
We are coming to hear his words from his own lips.”
They taunted and threatened the envoys in this fashion, and the gifts of welcome and the
greetings were another failure. Therefore the envoys hastened back to the city.
The Apparition of Tezcatlipoca
But then there was another series of envoys: magicians, wizards and priests. They also left the
city and went out to meet the strangers, but they were completely helpless: they could not blind
their eyes or overcome them in any way.
They even failed to meet and speak with the “gods,” because a certain drunkard blundered across
their path. He used the gestures that are used by the people of Chalco, and he was dressed like a
Chalca, with eight cords of couch-grass across his breast. He seemed to be very drunk; he
feigned drunkenness; he pretended to be a drunkard.
He came up to them while they were about to meet the Spaniards. He rushed up to the
Mexicanos and cried: “Why have you come here? For what purpose? What is it you want? What
is Motecuhzoma trying to do? Has he still not recovered his wits? Does he still tremble and beg?
He has committed many errors and destroyed a multitude of people. Some have been beaten and
others wrapped in shrouds; some have been betrayed and others mocked and derided.”
When the magicians heard these words, they tried in vain to approach him. They wanted to ask
his help, and they hurriedly built him a small temple and altar and a seat made of couch- grass.
But for a while they could not see him.
They labored in vain, they prepared his temple in vain, for he spoke to them only in oracles. He
terrified them with his harsh reproofs and spoke to them as if from a great distance:
“Why have you come here? It is useless. Mexico will be destroyed! Mexico will be left in ruins!”
He said: “Go back, go back! Turn your eyes toward the city. What was fated to happen has
already taken place!
They looked in the direction of Tenochtitlan. The temples were in flames, and so were the
communal halls, the religious schools and all the houses. It was as if a great battle were raging in
the city.
When the magicians saw this, they lost heart. They could not speak clearly, but talked as if they
were drunk: “It was not proper for us to have seen this vision. Motecuhzoma himself should have
beheld it! This was not a mere mortal. This was the young Tezcathpoca! “
Suddenly the god disappeared, and they saw him no longer. The envoys did not go forward to
meet the Spaniards; they did not speak with them. The priests and magicians turned and went
back to report to Motecuhzoma.
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Motecuhoma’s Despair
When the envoys arrived in the city, they told Motecuhzoma what had happened and what they
had seen. Motecuhzoma listened to their report and then bowed his head without speaking a
word. For a long time he remained thus, with his head bent down. And when he spoke at last, it
was only to say: “What help is there now, my friends? Is there a mountain for us to climb?
Should we run away? We are Mexicanos: would this bring any glory to the Mexican nation?
“Pity the old men, and the old women, and the innocent little children. How can they save
themselves? But there is no help. What can we do? Is there nothing left us?
“We will be judged and punished. And however it may be, and whenever it may be, we can do
nothing but wait.”
Chapter Seven
The Spaniards Are Welcomed in Tezcoco
Introduction
The Spaniards pushed on toward Tenochtitlan, coming down out of the mountains by way of
Tlalmanalco. Shortly after their descent, Prince Ixtlilxochitl of Tezcoco (brother of Cacama, the
lord of Tezcoco) left his city with a group of followers to greet Cortes in peace.
The Codex Ramirez preserves a few fragments in Spanish of an older, indigenous account of this
episode, of which the Nahuatl original has been lost. According to this account, it was Prince
Ixtlilxochit1 who persuaded the people of Tezcoco, resentful of Aztec domination, to join forces
with the conquistadors. The same account states that Cortes then visited the city of Tezcoco, but
this statement is not corroborated in any other source. Bernal Diaz del Castillo, Sahagun’s
informants and Fernando de Alva Ixthlxochitl do not mention such a visit; they say only that the
Spaniards marched to Ixtapalapa and from there to the Aztec capital.
The Codex Ramirez contains several anecdotes of interest and importance, especially the
reaction of Yacotzin, the prince’s mother, when her son asked her to change her religion. It also
describes how Motecuhzoma responded to the news that the Spaniards were approaching
Tezcoco. He ordered a last meeting of his chiefs, to discuss whether the strangers should be
welcomed or repulsed when they arrived at Tenochtitlan. Despite Cuitlahuac’s gloomy
predictions, he finally decided to receive them in peace.
The March to Tezcoco
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When the Spaniards looked down from the mountain heights, they were delighted to see so many
villages and towns. Some suggested that they should return to Tlaxcala until they could increase
their forces, but Cortes urged them on, and the march to Tezcoco was begun.
They spent that night in the mountains and set out again the next day. After they had marched a
few miles, they were met by Ixtlilxochitl and his brothers with a large company of followers.
Cortes distrusted them at first; but when he learned, through signs and translations, that they had
come out to meet the Spaniards as friends, he was greatly pleased. The Christians pointed to their
Captain, and Ixthlxochitl approached him and greeted him with smiles and obeisances, to which
Cortes responded in the Spanish fashion. The prince was astonished to see a man with such white
skin and with a beard and with so much courage and majesty, while Cortes, in turn, was
astonished by the prince and his brothers-especially by Tecocoltzin, who was as white as any of
the Spaniards.
At last, with La Malinche and Aguilar as interpreters, Ixtlilxochitl begged Cortes to accompany
him to Tezcoco, so that he and his people might serve him. Cortes thanked the prince and
accepted his invitation.
The Arrival at the City
At the request of Ixtlilxochitl, Cortes and his men ate the gifts of food that had been brought out
from Tezcoco. Then they walked to the city with their new friends, and all the people came out
to cheer and welcome them. The Indians knelt down and adored them as sons of the Sun, their
gods, believing that the time had come of which their dear king Nezahualpilli had so often
spoken. The Spaniards entered the city and were lodged in the royal palace.
Word of these events was brought to the king, Motecuhzoma, who was pleased by the reception
his nephews had given Cortes. He was also pleased by what Cohuamacotzin and Ixtlilxochitl had
said to the Captain, because he believed that Ixtlilxochitl would call in the garrisons stationed on
the frontiers. But God ordered it otherwise.
Cortes was very grateful for the attentions shown him by Ixtlilxochitl and his brothers; he wished
to repay their kindness by teaching them the law of God, with the help of his interpreter Aguilar.
The brothers and a number of the other lords gathered to hear him, and he told them that the
emperor of the Christians had sent him here, so far away, in order that he might instruct them in
the law of Christ. He explained the mystery of the Creation and the Fall, the mystery of the
Trinity and the Incarnation and the mystery of the Passion and the Resurrection. Then he drew
out a crucifix and held it up.
The Christians all knelt, and Ixtlilxochitl and the other lords knelt with them.
Cortes also explained the mystery of Baptism. He concluded the lesson by telling them how the
Emperor Charles grieved that they were not in God’s grace, and how the emperor had sent him
among them only to save their souls. He begged them to become willing vassals of the emperor,
because that was the will of the pope, in whose name he spoke.
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Ixtlilxochitl Becomes a Christian
When Cortes asked for their reply, Ixtlilxochitl burst into tears and answered that he and his
brothers understood the mysteries very well. Giving thanks to God that his soul had been
illuminated he said that he wished to become a Christian and to serve the emperor. He begged for
the crucifix, so that he and his brothers might worship it, and the Spaniards wept with joy to see
their devotion.
The princes then asked to be baptized. Cortes and the priest accompanying him said that first
they must learn more of the Christian religion, but that persons would be sent to instruct them.
Ixtlilxochitl expressed his gratitude, but begged to receive the sacrament at once because he now
hated all idolatry and revered the mysteries of the true faith.
Although a few of the Spaniards objected, Cortes decided that lxtlilxochitl should be baptized
immediately. Cortes himself served as godfather, and the prince was given the name Hernando,
because that was his sponsor’s name. His brother Cohuamacotzin was named Pedro because his
godfather was Pedro de Alvarado, and Tecocoltzin was named Fernando, with Cortes sponsoring
him also. The other Christians became godfathers to the other princes, and the baptisms were
performed with the greatest solemnity. If it had been possible, more than twenty thousand
persons would have been baptized that very day, and a great number of them did receive the
sacrament.
The Reactions of Yacotzin
Ixtlilxochitl went to his mother, Yacotzin, to tell her what had happened and to bring her out to
be baptized. She replied that he must have lost his mind to let himself be won over so easily by
that handful of barbarians, the conquistadors. Don Hernando said that if she were not his mother,
he would answer her by cutting off her head. He told her that she would receive the sacrament,
even against her will, because nothing was important except the life of the soul.
Yacotzin asked her son to leave her alone for the time being. She said she would think about
what he had told her and make her decision the next day. He left the palace and ordered her
rooms to be set on fire (though others say that he found her in a temple of idolatry).
Finally she came out, saying that she wanted to become a Christian. She went to Cortes and was
baptized with a great many others. Cortes; himself was her godfather, naming her Dona Maria
because she was the first woman in Tezcoco to become a Christian. Her four daughters, the
princesses, were also baptized, along with many other women. And during the three or four days
they were in the city, the Spaniards baptized a great multitude of people.
Motecuhoma’s Final Decision
When Motecuhzoma learned what had happened in Tezcoco, he called together his nephew
Cacama, his brother Cuitlahuac and the other lords. He proposed a long discussion in order to
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decide whether they should welcome the Christians when they arrived, and if so, in what manner.
Cuitlahuac replied that they should not welcome them in any manner, but Cacama disagreed,
saying that it would show a want of courage to deny them entrance once they were at the gates.
He added that it was not proper for a great lord like his uncle to turn away the ambassadors of
another great prince. If the visitors made any demands which displeased Motecuhzoma, he could
punish their insolence by sending his hosts of brave warriors against them.
Before any one else could speak, Motecuhzoma announced that he agreed with his nephew.
Cuitlahuac warned him: “I pray to our gods that you will not let the strangers into your house.
They will cast you out of it and overthrow your rule, and when you try to recover what you have
lost, it will be too late.” With this the council came to an end. The other lords all showed by their
gestures that they approved of this last opinion, but Motecuhzoma was resolved to welcome the
Christians as friends. He told his nephew Cacama to go out to meet them and sent his brother
Cuitlahuac to wait for them in the palace at Ixtapalapa.
Chapter Eight
The Spaniards Arrive in Tenochtitlan
Introduction
The Spaniards continued their march toward the Aztec capital, accompanied by all the allies they
had brought with them from the Tlaxcala region. The account given in the texts by Sahagun’s
informants, from which the passages in this chapter are drawn, begins with a description of the
order in which the various sections of the army made their appearance. They approached the
island city from the south, by way of Ixtapalapa, and arrived in Xoloco (later called San Anton
and now part of the Avenue of San Antonio Abad) on November 8, 1519. The precise date is
recorded in the XIII relacion of Fernando de Alva Ixtilxochitl.
When Cortes and Motecuhzoma finally met at Huitzillan, on the same avenue, they greeted each
other in speeches that have been carefully preserved by Sahagun’s informants. The texts then
describe the stay of the conquistadors in Tenochtitlan and their greed for the gold objects stored
in the treasure houses.
Motecuhzoma Goes Out to Meet Cortes
The Spaniards arrived in Xoloco, near the entrance to Tenochtitlan. That was the end of the
march, for they had reached their goal.
Motecuhzoma now arrayed himself in his finery, preparing to go out to meet them. The other
great princes also adorned their persons, as did the nobles and their chieftains and knights. They
all went out together to meet the strangers.
They brought trays heaped with the finest flowers-the flower that resembles a shield; the flower
shaped like a heart; in the center, the flower with the sweetest aroma; and the fragrant yellow
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flower, the most precious of all. They also brought garlands of flowers, and ornaments for the
breast, and necklaces of gold, necklaces hung with rich stones, necklaces fashioned in the
petatillo style.
Thus Motecuhzoma went out to meet them, there in Huitzillan. He presented many gifts to the
Captain and his commanders, those who had come to make war. He showered gifts upon them
and hung flowers around their necks; he gave them necklaces of flowers and bands of flowers to
adorn their breasts; he set garlands of flowers upon their heads. Then he hung the gold necklaces
around their necks and gave them presents of every sort as gifts of welcome.
Speeches of Motecuhzoma and Cortes
When Motecuhzoma had given necklaces to each one, Cortes asked him: “Are you
Motecuhzoma? Are you the king? Is it true that you are the king Motecuhzoma?”
And the king said: “Yes, I am Motecuhzoma.” Then he stood up to welcome Cortes; he came
forward, bowed his head low and addressed him in these words: “Our lord, you are weary. The
journey has tired you, but now you have arrived on the earth. You have come to your city,
Mexico. You have come here to sit on your throne, to sit under its canopy.
“The kings who have gone before, your representatives, guarded it and preserved it for your
coming. The kings Itzcoatl, Motecuhzoma the Elder, Axayacatl, Tizoc and Ahuitzol ruled for
you in the City of Mexico. The people were protected by their swords and sheltered by their
shields.
“Do the kings know the destiny of those they left behind, their posterity? If only they are
watching! If only they can see what I see!
“No, it is not a dream. I am not walking in my sleep. I am not seeing you in my dreams…. I have
seen you at last! I have met you face to face! I was in agony for five days, for ten days, with my
eyes fixed on the Region of the Mystery. And now you have come out of the clouds and mists to
sit on your throne again.
“This was foretold by the kings who governed your city, and now it has taken place. You have
come back to us; you have come down from the sky. Rest now, and take possession of your royal
houses. Welcome to your land, my lords!
When Motecuhzoma had finished, La Malinche translated his address into Spanish so that the
Captain could understand it. Cortes replied in his strange and savage tongue, speaking first to La
Malinche: “Tell Motecuhzoma that we are his friends. There is nothing to fear. We have wanted
to see him for a long time, and now we have seen his face and heard his words. Tell him that we
love him well and that our hearts are contented.”
Then he said to Motecuhzoma: “We have come to your house in Mexico as friends. There is
nothing to fear.”
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La Malinche translated this speech and the Spaniards grasped Motecuhzoma’s hands and patted
his back to show their affection for him.
Attitudes of the Spaniards and the Native Lords
The Spaniards examined everything they saw. They dismounted from their horses, and mounted
them again, and dismounted again, so as not to miss anything of interest.
The chiefs who accompanied Motecuhzoma were: Cacama, king of Tezcoco;
Tetlepanquetzaltzin, king of Tlacopan; Itzcuauhtzin the Tlacochcalcatl, lord of Tlatelolco; and
Topantemoc, Motecuhzoma’s treasurer in Tlatelolco. These four chiefs were standing in a file.
The other princes were: Atlixcatzin [chief who has taken captives]‘; Tepeoatzin, The
Tlacochcalcatl; Quetzalaztatzin, the keeper of the chalk; Totomotzin; Hecateupatiltzin; and
Cuappiatzin.
When Motecuhzoma was imprisoned, they all went into hiding. They ran away to hide and
treacherously abandoned him!
The Spaniards Take Possession of the City
When the Spaniards entered the Royal House, they placed Motecuhzoma under guard and kept
him under their vigilance. They also placed a guard over Itzcuauhtzin, but the other lords were
permitted to depart.
Then the Spaniards fired one of their cannons, and this caused great confusion in the city. The
people scattered in every direction; they fled without rhyme or reason; they ran off as if they
were being pursued. It was as if they had eaten the mushrooms that confuse the mind, or had
seen some dreadful apparition. They were all overcome by terror, as if their hearts had fainted.
And when night fell, the panic spread through the city and their fears would not let them -sleep.
In the morning the Spaniards told Motecuhzoma what they needed in the way of supplies:
tortillas, fried chickens, hens’ eggs, pure water, firewood and charcoal. Also: large, clean cooking
pots, water jars, pitchers, dishes and other pottery. Motecuhzoma ordered that it be sent to them.
The chiefs who received this order were angry with the king and no longer revered or respected
him. But they furnished the Spaniards with all the provisions they needed-food beverages and
water and fodder for the horses.
The Spaniards Reveal Their Greed
When the Spaniards were installed in the palace, they asked Motecuhzoma about the city’s
resources and reserves and about the warriors’ ensigns and shields They questioned him closely
and demanded gold.
Motecuzoma. guided them to it. They surrounded him and crowded close with their weapons. He
walked in the center, and they formed a circle around him.
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When they arrived at the treasure house called Teucalco, the riches of gold and feathers were
brought out to them: ornaments made of quetzal feathers, richly worked shields, disks of gold,
the necklaces of the idols, gold nose plugs, gold greaves and bracelets and crowns.
The Spaniards immediately stripped the feathers from the gold shields and ensigns. They
gathered all the gold into a great mound and set fire to everything else, regardless of its value.
Then they melted down the gold into ingots. As for the precious green stones, they took only the
best of them; the rest were snatched up by the Tlaxcaltecas. The Spaniards searched through the
whole treasure house, questioning and quarreling, and seized every object they thought was
beautiful.
The Seizure of Motecuhzoma’s Treasures
Next they went to Motecuhzoma’s storehouse, in the place called Totocalco [Place of the Palace
of the Birds],’ where his personal treasures were kept. The Spaniards grinned like little beasts and
patted each other with delight.
When they entered the hall of treasures, it was as if they had arrived in Paradise. They searched
everywhere and coveted everything; they were slaves to their own greed. All of Motecuhzoma’s
possessions were brought out: fine bracelets, necklaces with large stones, ankle rings with little
gold bells, the royal crowns and all the royal finery-everything that belonged to the king and was
reserved to him only. They seized these treasures as if they were their own, as if this plunder
were merely a stroke of good luck. And when they had taken all the gold, they heaped up
everything else in the middle of the patio.
La Malinche called the nobles together. She climbed up to the palace roof and cried:
“Mexicanos, come forward! The Spaniards need your help! Bring them food and pure water.
They are tired and hungry; they are almost fainting from exhaustion! Why do you not come
forward? Are you angry with them?”
The Mexicans were too frightened to approach. They were crushed by terror and would not risk
coming forward. They shied away as if the Spaniards were wild beasts, as if the hour were
midnight on the blackest night of the year. Yet they did not abandon the Spaniards to hunger and
thirst. They brought them whatever they needed, but shook with fear as they did so. They
delivered the supplies to the Spaniards with trembling hands, then turned and hurried away.
Chapter Nine
The Massacre in the Main Temple During the Fiesta of Toxcatl
Introduction
Several indigenous texts-the Codex Ramirez, the XIII relacion of Alva Ixtlilxochitl and the
Codex Aubin-describe the massacre perpetrated during the fiesta of Toxcatl, which the Aztecs I
celebrated in honor of the god Huitzilopochtli. “This was the most important of their fiestas,”
wrote Sahagun. “It was like our Easter and fell at almost the same time.”
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Cortes had been absent from the city for twenty days when the massacre took place; he had gone
out to fight Panfilo de Narvaez, who was coming to arrest him by order of Diego Velazques,
governor of Cuba. Cortes’ deputy, Pedro de Alvarado, treacherously murdered the celebrants
when the festival was at its height.
We have chosen two different accounts of the massacre, both written originally in Nahuatl. They
describe it with a realism comparable to that of the great epic poems of classical antiquity.
The first account, by Sahagun’s native informants, tells of the preparations for the fiesta, the
sudden attack by the Spaniards in the midst of the ceremonies and the retaliation by the Indians,
who besieged the Spaniards when they took refuge in Motecuhzoma’s palace.
The second brief account is by the native author of the Codex Aubin. “From a literary
standpoint,” says Dr. Garibav, “the passage is of extraordinary merit. It shows us the living,
suffering people of Tenochtitlan as they faced the attack of the Tonatiuh (Alvarado), who was as
handsome as he was wicked.”
The Preparations for the Fiesta
The Aztecs begged permission of their king to hold the fiesta of Huitzilopochtli. The Spaniards
wanted to see this fiesta to learn how it was celebrated. A delegation of the celebrants came to
the palace where Motecuhzoma was a prisoner, and when their spokesman asked his permission,
he granted it to them.
As soon as the delegation returned, the women began to grind seeds of the chicalote. These
women had fasted for a whole year. They ground the seeds in the patio of the temple.
The Spaniards came out of the palace together, dressed in armor and carrying their weapons with
them. They stalked among the women and looked at them one by one; they stared into the faces
of the women who were grinding seeds. After this cold inspection, they went back into the
palace. It is said that they planned to kill the celebrants if the men entered the patio.
The Statue of Huitzilopochtli
On the evening before the fiesta of Toxcatl, the celebrants began to model a statue of
Huitzilopochtli. They gave it such a human appearance that it seemed the body of a living man.
Yet they made the statue with nothing but-a paste made of the ground seeds of the chicalote,
which they shaped over an armature of sticks.
When the statue was finished, they dressed it in rich feathers, and they painted crossbars over
and under its eyes. They also clipped on its earrings of turquoise mosaic; these were in the shape
of serpents, with gold rings hanging from them. Its nose plug, in the shape of an arrow, was
made of gold and was inlaid with fine stones.
They placed the magic headdress of hummingbird feathers on its head. They also adorned it with
an anecuyotl, which was a belt made of feathers, with a cone at the back. Then they hung around
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its neck an ornament of yellow parrot feathers, fringed like the locks of a young boy. Over this
they put, its nettle-leaf cape, which was painted black and decorated with five clusters of eagle
feathers.
Next they wrapped it in its cloak, which was painted with skulls and bones, and over this they
fastened its vest. The vest was painted with dismembered human parts: skulls, ears, hearts,
intestines, torsos, breasts, hands and feet. They also put on its maxtlatl, or loincloth, which was
decorated with images of dissevered limbs and fringed with amate paper. This maxtatl was
painted with vertical stripes of bright blue.
They fastened a red paper flag at its shoulder and placed on its head what looked like a sacrificial
flint knife. This too was made of red paper; it seemed to have been steeped in blood.
The statue carried a tehuehuelli, a bamboo shield decorated with four clusters of fine eagle
feathers. The pendant of this shield was blood-red, like the knife and the shoulder flag. The
statue also carried four arrows.
Finally, they put the wristbands on its arms. These bands, made of coyote skin, were fringed with
paper cut into little strips.
The Beginning of the Fiesta
Early the next morning, the statue’s face was uncovered by those who had been chosen for that
ceremony. They gathered in front of the idol in single file and offered it gifts of food, such as
round seedcakes or perhaps human flesh. But they did not carry it up to its temple on top of the
pyramid.
All the young warriors were eager for the fiesta to begin. They had sworn to dance and sing with
all their hearts, so that the Spaniards would marvel at the beauty of the rituals.
The procession began, and the celebrants filed into the temple patio to dance the Dance of the
Serpent. When they were all together in the patio, the songs and the dance began. Those who had
fasted for twenty days and those who had fasted for a year were in command of the others; they
kept the dancers in file with their pine wands. (If anyone wished to urinate, he did not stop
dancing, but simply opened his clothing at the hips and separated his clusters of heron feathers.)
If anyone disobeyed the leaders or was not in his proper place they struck him on the hips and
shoulders. Then they drove him out of the patio, beating him and shoving him from behind. They
pushed him so hard that he sprawled to the ground, and they dragged him outside by the ears. No
one dared to say a word about this punishment, for those who had fasted during the year were
feared and venerated; they had earned the exclusive title “Brothers of Huitzilopoehth.”
The great captains, the bravest warriors, danced at the head of the files to guide the others. The
youths followed at a slight distance. Some of the youths wore their hair gathered into large locks,
a sign that they had never taken any captives.
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Others carried their headdresses on their shoulders; they had taken captives, but only with help.
Then came the recruits, who were called “the young warriors.” They had each captured an enemy
or two. The others called to them: “Come, comrades, show us how brave you are! Dance with all
your hearts!
The Spaniards Attack the Celebrants
At this moment in the fiesta, when the dance was loveliest and when song was linked to song, the
Spaniards were seized with an urge to kill the celebrants. They all ran forward, armed as if for
battle. They closed the entrances and passageways, all the gates of the patio: the Eagle Gate in
the lesser palace, the Gate of the Canestalk and the Gate of the serpent of mirrors.
They posted guards so that no one could escape, and then rushed into the Sacred Patio to
slaughter the celebrants. They came on foot, carrying their swords and their wooden or metal
shields
They ran in among the dancers, forcing their way to the place where the drums were played.
They attacked the man who was drumming and cut off his arms. Then they cut off his head, and
it rolled across the floor.
They attacked all the celebrants, stabbing them, spearing them, striking them with their swords.
They attacked some of them from behind, and these fell instantly to the ground with their entrails
hanging out. Others they beheaded: they cut off their heads, or split their heads to pieces.
They struck others in the shoulders, and their arms were torn from their bodies. They wounded
some in the thigh and some in the calf. They slashed others in the abdomen, and their entrails all
spilled to the ground. Some attempted to run away, but their intestines dragged as they ran; they
seemed to tangle their feet in their own entrails. No matter how they tried to save themselves,
they could find no escape.
Some attempted to force their way out, but the Spaniards murdered them at the gates. Others
climbed the walls, but they could not save themselves. Those who ran into the communal houses
were safe there for a while; so were those who lay down among the victims and pretended to be
dead. But if they stood up again, the Spaniards saw them and killed them.
The blood of the warriors flowed like water and gathered into pools. The pools widened, and the
stench of blood and entrails filled the air. The Spaniards ran into the communal houses to kill
those who were hiding. They ran everywhere and searched everywhere; they invaded every
room, hunting and killing.
The Aztecs Retaliate
When the news of this massacre was heard outside the Sacred Patio, a great cry went up:
“Mexicanos, come running! Bring your spears and shields! The strangers have murdered our
warriors! “
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This cry was answered with a roar of grief and anger: the people shouted and wailed and beat
their palms against their mouths. The captains assembled at once, as if the hour had been
determined in advance. They all carried their spears and shields.
Then the battle began. The Aztecs attacked with javelins and arrows, even with the light spears
that are used for hunting birds. They hurled their javelins with all their strength, and the cloud of
missiles spread out over the Spaniards like a yellow cloak.
The Spaniards immediately took refuge in the palace. They began to shoot at the Mexicans with
their iron arrows and to fire their cannons and arquebuses. And they shackled Motecuhzoma in
chains.
The Lament for the Dead
The Mexicans who had died in the massacre were taken out of the patio one by one and inquiries
were made to discover their names. The fathers and mothers of the dead wept and lamented.
Each victim was taken first to his own home and then to the Sacred Patio, where all the dead
were brought together. Some of the bodies were later burned in the place called the Eagle Urn,
and others in the House of the Young Men.
Motecuhzoma’s Message
At sunset, Itzcuauhtzin climbed onto the roof of the palace and shouted this proclamation:
“Mexicanos Tlatelolcas!
Your king, the lord Motecuhzoma, has sent me to speak for him. Mexicanos, hear me, for these
are his words to you: ‘We must not fight them. We are not their equals in battle. Put down your
shields and arrows.’
“He tells you this because it is the aged who will suffer most, and they deserve your pity. The
humblest classes will also suffer, and so will the innocent children who still crawl on all fours,
who still sleep in their cradles.
“Therefore your king says: ‘We are not strong enough to defeat them. Stop fighting, and return to
your homes.’ Mexicanos, they have put your king in chains; his feet are bound with chains.”
When Itzcuauhtzin had finished speaking, there was a great uproar among the people. They
shouted insults at him in their fury, and cried: “Who is Motecuhzoma to give us orders? We are
no longer his slaves! ” They shouted war cries and fired arrows at the rooftop. The Spaniards
quickly hid Motecuhzoma and ltzcuauhtzin behind their shields so that the arrows would not find
them.
The Mexicans were enraged because the attack on the captains had been so treacherous: their
warriors had been killed without the slightest warning. Now they refused to go away or to put
down their arms.
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The Spaniards Are Besieged
The royal palace was placed under siege. The Mexicans kept a close watch to prevent anyone
from stealing in with food for the Spaniards. They also stopped delivering supplies: they brought
them absolutely nothing, and waited for them to die of hunger.
A few people attempted to communicate with the Spaniards. They hoped to win their favor by
giving them advice and information or by secretly bringing them food. But the guards found
them and killed them on the spot: they broke their necks or stoned them to death.
Once a group of porters was discovered bringing rabbit skins into the city. They let slip the fact
that other persons had been hiding in their midst. Therefore strict orders were issued to maintain
a watch over all the roads and causeways leading to the city. The porters themselves had been
sent by the chiefs of Ayotzintepec and Chinantlan. They were only performing
their duties, but the guards seized them and put them to death for no reason. They would shout:
“Here is another one!” and then kill him. And if they happened to see one of Motecuhzoma’s
servants with his glass lip plug, they slaughtered him at once, claiming: “He was bringing food to
Motecuhzoma.”
They seized anyone who was dressed like a porter or any other servant. “Here is another traitor,”
they would say. “He is bringing news to Motecuhzoma.” The prisoner would try to save his life
by pleading with them: “What are you doing, Mexicanos? I am not a traitor! ” But they would
answer: “Yes, you are. We know you are one of his servants.” And they would immediately put
him to death.
They stopped and examined everyone in the same way, studying each man’s face and questioning
him about his work. No one could walk out of doors without being arrested and accused. They
sentenced a great many people for imaginary crimes; the victims were executed for acts they had
never committed. The other servants, therefore, went home and hid themselves. They were afraid
to be seen in public: they knew what would happen to them if they fell into the hands of the
guards or the other warriors.
After they had trapped the Spaniards in the palace, the Mexicans kept them under attack for
seven days, and for twenty- three days they foiled all their attempts to break out. During this time
all the causeways were closed off. The Mexicans tore up the bridges, opened great gaps in the
pavement and built a whole series of barricades; they did everything they could to make the
causeways impassable. They also closed off the roads by building walls and roadblocks; they
obstructed all the roads and streets of the city.
The Massacre According to the Codex Aubin
Motecuhzoma said to La Malinche: “Please ask the god to hear me. It is almost time to celebrate
the fiesta of Toxcatl. It will last for only ten days, and we beg his permission to hold it. We
merely burn some incense and dance our dances. There will be a little noise because of the
music, but that is all.”
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The Captain said: “Very well, tell him they may hold it.” Then he left the city to meet another
force of Spaniards who were marching in this direction. Pedro de Alvarado, called The Sun, was
in command during his absence.
When the day of the fiesta arrived, Motecuhzoma said to The Sun: “Please hear me, my lord. We
beg your permission to begin the fiesta of our god.”
The Sun replied: “Let it begin. We shall be here to watch it”
The Aztec captains then called for their elder brothers, who were given this order: “You must
celebrate the fiesta as grandly as possible.”
The elder brothers replied: “We will dance with all our might.”
Then Tecatzin, the chief of the armory, said: “Please remind the lord that he is here, not in
Cholula. You know how they trapped the Cholultecas in their patio! They have already caused us
enough trouble. We should hide our weapons close at hand! “
But Motecuhzoma said: “Are we at war with them? I tell you, we can trust them.”
Tecatzin said: “Very well.”
Then the songs and dances began. A young captain wearing a lip plug guided the dancers; he was
Cuatlazol, from Tolnahuac.
But the songs had hardly begun when the Christians came out of the palace. They entered the
patio and stationed four guards at each entrance. Then they attacked the captain who was guiding
the dance. One of the Spaniards struck the idol in the face, and others attacked the three men who
were playing the drums. After that there was a general slaughter until the patio was heaped with
corpses.
A priest from the Place of the Canefields’ cried out in a loud voice: “Mexicanos! Who said we
are not at war? Who said we could trust them?”
The Mexicans could only fight back with sticks of wood; they were cut to pieces by the swords.
Finally the Spaniards retired to the palace where they were lodged.
Chapter Ten
The Night of Sorrows
Introduction
After disposing of Panfilo de Narvaez, Cortes returned to the city, his ranks increased by troops
from the defeated army. According to Sahagun’s informants (from whose writings this chapter is
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drawn), the Aztecs planned to fall on him from ambush; but he reached the garrison in
Tenochtitlan without hindrance and immediately ordered the cannons to be fired. The Aztecs
responded
by renewing their attack on the palace. The battle raged for four days. During a lull in the
fighting, the Spaniards dragged the dead bodies of Motecuhzoma and Itzcuauhtzin to the water’s
edge. No one knows for certain how Motecuhzoma died.
It soon became obvious to Cortes that he would have to abandon Tenochtitlan. He withdrew at
night, but the retreat was discovered, and the Aztecs avenged themselves for the massacre in the
temple patio. They attacked as the Spaniards were fleeing down the Tlacopan (now Tacuba)
causeway, and the rout was so disastrous that it has been known ever since as “la noche triste,”
the Night of Sorrows. Those who escaped the disaster found refuge in the nearby village of
Teocalhueyacan, where they were welcomed as friends; but three-fourths of the army had
perished in the retreat and in the siege that preceded it.
The chapter concludes with a brief selection from the XIII relacion by Alva Ixtilxochitl. The
Spaniards Abandon the City
At midnight the Spaniards and Tlaxcaltecas came out in closed ranks, the Spaniards going first
and the Tlaxcaltecas following. The allies kept very close behind, as if they were crowding up
against a wall. The sky was overcast and rain fell all night in the darkness, but it was a gentle
rain, more like a drizzle or a heavy dew.
The Spaniards carried portable wooden bridges to cross the canals.’ They set them in place,
crossed over and raised them again. They were able to pass the first three canals-the
Tecpantzinco, the Tzapotlan and the Atenchicalco-without being seen. But when they reached
the fourth, the Mixcoatechialtitlan, their retreat was discovered.
The Battle Begins
The first alarm was raised by a woman who was drawing water at the edge of the canal. She
cried: “Mexicanos, come running’ They are crossing the canal! Our enemies are escaping!”
Then a priest of Huitzilopochtli shouted the call to arms from the temple pyramid. His voice rang
out over the city: “Captains, warriors, Mexicanos! Our enemies are escaping! Follow them in
your boats. Cut them off, and destroy them!
When they heard this cry, the warriors leaped into the boats and set out in pursuit. These boats
were from the garrisons of Tenochtitlan and Tlatelolco,’ and were protected by the warriors’
shields. The boatmen paddled with all their might; they lashed the water of the lake until it
boiled.
Other warriors set out on foot, racing to Nonohualco and then to Tlacopan to cut off the retreat.
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The boats converged on the Spaniards from both sides of the causeway, and the warriors loosed a
storm of arrows at the fleeing army. But the Spaniards also turned to shoot at the Aztecs; they
fired their crossbows and their arquebuses. The Spaniards and Tlaxcaltecas suffered many
casualties, but many of the Aztec warriors were also killed or wounded.
The Massacre at the Canal of the Toltecs
When the Spaniards reached the Canal of the Toltecs, in Tlaltecayohuacan, they hurled
themselves headlong into the water, as if they were leaping from a cliff. The Tlaxcaltecas, the
allies from Tliliuhquitepec, the Spanish foot soldiers and horsemen, the few women who
accompanied the army-all came to the brink and plunged over it.
The canal was soon choked with the bodies of men and horses; they filled the gap in the
causeway with their own drowned bodies. Those who followed crossed to the other side by
walking on the corpses.
When they reached Petlalco, where there was another canal, they crossed over on their portable
bridge without being attacked by the Aztecs.5 They stopped and rested there for a short while,
and began to feel more like men again. Then they marched on to Popotla.
Dawn was breaking as they entered the village. Their hearts were cheered by the brightening
light of this new day: they thought the horrors of the retreat by night were all behind them. But
suddenly they heard war cries and the Aztecs swarmed through the streets and surrounded them.
They had come to capture Tlaxcaltecas for their sacrifices. They also wanted to complete their
revenge against the Spaniards.
The Aztecs harried the army all the way to Tlacopan. Chimalpopoca, the son of Motecuhzoma,
was killed in the action at Tlilyuhcan by an arrow from the crossbows. Tlaltecatzin, the Tepanec
prince, was wounded in the same action and died shortly after. He had served the Spaniards as a
guide and advisor, pointing out the best roads and short cuts.
The Spaniards Take Refuge in Teocalhueyacan
Then the Spaniards forded a small river called the Tepzolatl. Next they crossed two rivers, the
Tepzolac and the Acueco, and stopped in Otoncalpulco, where the temple patio was surrounded
by a wooden wall. They rested there in safety, catching their breath and recovering their strength.
While they were resting, the lord of Teocalhueyacan paid them a visit. He was known as The
Otomi, a title reserved for
the nobility. He greeted them and offered them the gifts of food his servants had brought:
tortillas, eggs, roast chickens, a few five hens and various kinds of fruit. He placed these
offerings in front of the Captain and said: “My lords, you are weary. You have suffered many
heartaches. We beg the gods to rest now and enjoy these gifts.”
La Malinche said: “My lord, the Captain wishes to know where you are from.”
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He answered: “Tell our lord that we are from. Teocalhueyacan. Tell him that we hope he will
visit us.”
La Malinche said: “The Captain thanks you. We shall arrive tomorrow or the day after.”
The Aztecs Recover the Spoils
As soon as it was daylight, the Aztecs cleared the dead Spaniards and Tlaxcaltecas out of the
canals and stripped them of everything they wore. They loaded the bodies of the Tlaxcaltecas
into canoes and took them out to where the rushes grow; they threw them among the rushes
without burying them, without giving them another glance.
They also threw out the corpses of the women who had been killed in the retreat. The naked
bodies of these women were the color of ripe corn, for they had painted themselves with yellow
paint.
But they laid out the corpses of the Spaniards apart from the others; they lined them up in rows
in a separate place. Their bodies were as white as the new buds of the canestalk, as white as the
buds of the maguey. They also removed the dead “stags” that had carried the “gods” on their
shoulders.
Then they gathered up everything the Spaniards had abandoned in their terror. When a man saw
something he wanted, he took it, and it became his property; he hefted it onto his shoulders and
carried it home. They also collected all the weapons that had been left behind or had fallen into
the canal-the cannons, arquebuses, swords, spears, bows and arrows-along with all the steel
helmets, coats of mail and breast- plates, and the shields of metal, wood and hide. They
recovered the gold ingots, the gold disks, the tubes of gold dust and the chalchihuite collars with
their gold pendants.
They gathered up everything they could find and searched the waters of the canal with the
greatest care. Some of them groped with their hands and others felt about with their feet. Those
who went first were able to keep their balance but those who came along behind them all fell into
the water.
The Account by Alva Ixtlilxochitl
Cortes turned in the direction of Tenochtitlan and entered the city of Tezcoco. He was received
only by a group of knights, because the legitimate sons of King Nezahualpilli had been hidden
by their servants, and the other lords were being held by the Aztecs as hostages. He entered
Tenochtitlan with his army of Spaniards and allies on the day of St. John the Baptist, without
being molested in any way.
The Mexicans gave them everything they needed, but when they saw that Cortes had no intention
of leaving the city or of freeing their leaders, they rallied their warriors and attacked the
Spaniards. This attack began on the day after Cortes entered the city and lasted for seven days.
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On the third day, Motecuhzoma climbed onto the rooftop and tried to admonish his people, but
they cursed him and shouted that he was a coward and a traitor to his country. They even
threatened him with their weapons. It is said that an Indian killed him with a stone from his sling,
but the palace servants declared that the Spaniards put him to death by stabbing him in the
abdomen with their swords.
On the seventh day, the Spaniards abandoned the city along with the Tlaxcaltecas, the
Huexotzincas and their other allies. They fled down the causeway that leads out to Tlacopan. But
before they left, they murdered King Cacama of Tezcoco, his three sisters and two of his
brothers.
There are several accounts by Indians who took part in the fighting that ensued. They tell how
their warriors killed a great many of the Spaniards and their allies, and how the army took refuge
on a mountain near Tlacopan and then marched to Tlaxcala.
Chapter Eleven
The Siege of Tenochtitlan
Introduction
The Aztecs, convinced that the Spaniards would never return to Tenochtitlan, celebrated their
fiestas again in the traditional manner, and Cuitlahuac was elected king to succeed his brother
Motecuhzoma. The Aztec kings were chosen by a council of four lords, representing the four
quarters, or phratries, into which the twenty clans of the city were evenly grouped. The council
attempted to choose the wisest and bravest man among the brothers, sons and nephews of the
previous ruler. Their choice of Cuitlahuac may have been influenced by the fact that he had
warned against allowing the Spaniards to enter Tenochtitlan (Chapter 7).
This period of normalcy was soon ended by the terrible plague that quickly spread through the
city. The plague seems to have been an epidemic of smallpox, which was previously unknown
among the Indians. One of its victims was the new king himself. Shortly afterward, the Spaniards
reappeared. They had rebuilt their army in Tlaxcala and marched to Tlacopan by way of
Tezcoco.
A number of indigenous documents describe the siege of the Aztec capital. We have chosen the
account given by Sahagun’s native informants in the Codex Florentino.
Tenochtitlan After the Departure of Cortes
When the Spaniards left Tenochtitlan, the Aztecs thought they had departed for good and would
never return. Therefore they repaired and decorated the temple of their god, sweeping it clean
and throwing out all the dirt and wreckage.
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Then the eighth month’ arrived, and the Aztecs celebrated it as always.’ They adorned the
impersonators of the gods, all those who played the part of gods in the ceremonies, decking them
with necklaces and turquoise masks and dressing them in the sacred clothing. This clothing was
made of quetzal feathers, eagle feathers and yellow parrot feathers. The finery of the gods was in
the care of the great princes.
The Plague Ravages the City
While the Spaniards were in Tlaxcala, a great plague broke out here in Tenochtitlan. It began to
spread during the thirteenth month and lasted for seventy days, striking every where in the city
and killing a vast number of our people. Sores erupted on our faces, our breasts, our bellies; we
were covered with agonizing sores from head to foot.
The illness was so dreadful that no one could walk or move. The sick were so utterly helpless
that they could only lie on their beds like corpses, unable to move their limbs or even their heads.
They could not lie face down or roll from one side to the other. If they did move their bodies,
they screamed with pain.
A great many died from this plague, and many others died of hunger. hey could not getup to
search for food, and everyone else was too sick to care for them, so they starved to death in their
beds.
Some people came down with a milder form of the disease; they suffered less than the others and
made a good recovery. But they could not escape entirely. Their looks were ravaged, for
wherever a sore broke out, it gouged an ugly pockmark in the skin. And a few of the survivors
were left completely blind.
The first cases were reported in Cuatlan. By the time the danger was recognized, the plague was
so well established that nothing could halt it, and eventually it spread all the way to Chalco. Then
its virulence diminished considerably, though there were isolated cases for many months after.
The first victims were stricken during the fiesta of Teotlecco and the faces of our warriors were
not clean and free of sores until the fiesta of Panquetzaliztli.
The Spaniards Return
And now the Spaniards came back again. They marched here by way of Tezcoco, set up
headquarters in Tlacopan and then divided their forces. Pedro de Alvarado was assigned the road
to the Tlatelolco quarter as his personal responsibility, while Cortes himself took charge of the
Coyoacan area and the road from Acachinanco to Tenochtitlan proper. Cortes knew that the
captain of Tenochtitlan was extremely brave.
The first battle began outside Tlatelolco, either at the ash pits or at the place called the Point of
the Alders, and then shifted to Nonohualco. Our warriors put the enemy to flight and not a single
Aztec was killed. The Spaniards tried a second advance but our warriors attacked them from
their boats, loosing such a storm of arrows that the Spaniards were forced to retreat again.
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Cortes, however, set out for Acachinanco and reached his goal. He moved his headquarters there,
just outside the city.
Heavy fighting ensued, but the Aztecs could not dislodge him.
The Spaniards Launch Their Brigantines
Finally the ships, a dozen in all, came from Tezcoco and anchored near Acachinanco. Cortes
went out to inspect the canals that traversed the causeways, to discover the best passages for his
fleet. He wanted to know which were the nearest, the shortest, the deepest, the straightest, so that
none of his ships would run aground or be trapped inside. One of the canals across the Xoloco
thoroughfare was so twisted and narrow that only two of the smaller ships were able to pass
through it.
The Spaniards now decided to attack Tenochtitlan and destroy its people. The cannons were
mounted in the ships, the sails were raised and the fleet moved out onto the lake. The flagship led
the way, flying a great linen standard with Cortes’ coat of arms. The soldiers beat their drums and
blew their trumpets; they played their flutes and chirimias and whistles.
When the ships approached the Zoquiapan quarter,” the common people were terrified at the
sight. They gathered their children into the canoes and fled helter-skelter across the lake,
moaning with fear and paddling as swiftly as they could. They left all their possessions behind
them and abandoned their little farms without looking back.
Our enemies seized all our possessions. They gathered up everything they could find and loaded
it into the ships in great bundles. They stole our cloaks and blankets, our battle dress, our tabors
and drums, and carried them all away. The Tlatelolcas followed and attacked the Spaniards from
their boats but could not save any of the plunder.
When the Spaniards reached Xoloco, near the entrance to Tenochtitlan, they found that the
Indians had built a wall across the road to block their progress. They destroyed it with four shots
from the largest cannon. The first shot did little harm, but the second split it and the third opened
a great hole. With the fourth shot, the wall lay in ruins on the ground.
Two of the brigantines, both with cannons mounted in their bows, attacked a flotilla of our
shielded canoes. The cannons were fired into the thick of the flotilla, wherever the canoes were
crowded closest together. Many of our warriors were killed outright; others drowned because
they were too crippled by their wounds to swim away. The water was red with the blood of the
dead and dying. Those who were hit by the steel arrows were also doomed; they died instantly
and sank to the bottom of the lake.
Defensive Tactics of the Aztecs
When the Aztecs discovered that the shots from the arquebuses and cannons always flew in a
straight line, they no longer ran away in the line of fire. They ran to the right or left or in zigzags,
not in front of the guns. If they saw that a cannon was about to be fired and they could not escape
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by running, they threw themselves to the ground and lay flat until the shot had passed over them.
The warriors also took cover among the houses, darting into the spaces between them. The road
was suddenly as empty as if it passed through a desert.
Then the Spaniards arrived in Huitzillan, where they found another wall blocking the road. A
great crowd of our warriors was hiding behind it to escape the gunfire.
The Spaniards Debark
The brigantines came up and anchored nearby. They had been pursuing our war canoes in the
open lake, but when they had almost run them down, they suddenly turned and sailed toward the
causeway. Now they anchored a short distance from the houses. As soon as the cannons in their
bows were loaded again, the soldiers aimed and fired them at the new wan.
The first shot cracked it in a dozen places, but it remained standing. They. fired again: this time it
cracked from one end to the other and crumpled to the ground. A moment later the road was
completely empty. The warriors had all fled when they saw the wall collapsing; they ran blindly,
this way and that, howling with fear.
Then the Spaniards debarked and filled in the canal. Working hurriedly, they threw in the stones
from the shattered wall, the roof beams and adobe bricks from the nearest houses, anything they
could find, until the surface of the fill was level with the causeway. Then a squad of about ten
horsemen crossed over it. They galloped to and fro, scouting both sides of the road; they raced
and wheeled and clattered back and forth. Soon they were joined by another squad that rode up
to support them.
A number of Tlatelolcas had rushed into the palace where Motecuhzoma lived before he was
slain. When they came out again, they unexpectedly met the Spanish cavalry. The lead horseman
stabbed one of the Tlatelolcas, but the wounded man was able to clutch the lance and cling to it.
His friends ran to his aid and twisted it from the Spaniard’s hands. They knocked the horseman
from his saddle, beat and kicked him as he lay on his back on the ground, and then cut off his
head.
The Spaniards now joined all their forces into one unit and marched together as far as the Eagle
Gate, where they set up the cannons they had brought with them. It was called the Eagle Gate
because it was decorated with an enormous eagle carved of stone. The eagle was flanked on one
side by a stone jaguar; on the other side there was a large honey bear, also of carved stone.
Two rows of tall columns led into the city from this gate. Some of the Aztecs hid behind the
columns when they saw the Spaniards and their guns; others climbed onto the roofs of the
communal houses. None of the warriors dared to show his face openly.
The Spaniards wasted no time as they loaded and fired the cannons. The smoke belched out in
black clouds that darkened the sky, as if night were falling. The warriors hidden behind the
columns broke from cover and fled; those on the rooftops climbed down and ran after them.
When the smoke cleared away, the Spaniards could not see a single Aztec.
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The Spaniards Advance to the Heart of the City
Then the Spaniards brought forward the largest cannon and set it up on the sacrificial stone. The
priests of Huitzilopochtli immediately began to beat their great ritual drums from the top of the
pyramid. The deep throbbing of the drums resounded over the city, calling the warriors to defend
the shrine of their god. But two of the Spanish soldiers climbed the stairway to the temple
platform, cut the priests down with their swords and pitched them headlong over the brink.
The great captains and warriors who had been fighting from their canoes now returned and
landed. The canoes were paddled by the younger warriors and the recruits. As soon as the
warriors landed, they ran through the streets, hunting the enemy and shouting: “Mexicanos, come
find them!”
The Spaniards, seeing that an attack was imminent, tightened their ranks and clenched the hilts
of their swords. The next moment, all was noise and confusion. The Aztecs charged into the
plaza from every direction, and the air was black with arrows and gunsmoke.
The battle was so furious that both sides had to pull back. The Aztecs withdrew to Xoloco to
catch their breath and dress their wounds, while the Spaniards retreated to their camp in
Acachinanco, abandoning the cannon they had set up on the sacrificial stone. Later the warriors
dragged this cannon to the edge of the canal and toppled it in. It sank at a place called the Stone
Toad.
The Aztecs Take Refuge
During this time the Aztecs took refuge in the Tlatelolco quarter. They deserted the Tenochtitlan
quarters all in one day, weeping and lamenting like women. Husbands searched for their wives,
and fathers carried their small children on their shoulders. Tears of grief and despair streamed
down their cheeks.
The Tlatelolcas, however, refused to give up. They raced into Tenochtitlan to continue the fight
and the Spaniards soon learned how brave they were. Pedro de Alvarado launched an attack
against the Point of the Alders, in the direction of Nonohualco, but his troops were shattered as if
he had sent them against a stone cliff. The battle was fought both, on dry land and on the water,
where the Indians shot at the Spaniards from their shielded canoes. Alvarado was routed and had
to draw back to Tlacopan.
On the following day, two brigantines came up loaded with troops, and the Spaniards united all
their forces on the outskirts of Nonohualco. The soldiers in the brigantines came ashore and the
whole army marched into the very heart of Tenochtitlan. Wherever they went, they found the
streets empty, with no Indians anywhere in sight.
The Last Stand
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Then the great captain Tzilacatzin arrived, bringing with him three large, round stones of the
kind used for building walls. He carried one of them in his hand; the other two hung from his
shield. When he hurled these stones at the Spaniards, they turned and fled the city.
Tzilacatzin’s military rank was that of Otomi, and he clipped his hair in the style of the Otomies.”
He scorned his enemies, Spaniards as well as Indians; they all shook with terror at the mere sight
of him.
When the Spaniards found out how dangerous he was, they tried desperately to kill him. They
attacked him with their swords and spears, fired at him with their crossbows and arquebuses, and
tried every other means they could think of to kill or cripple him. Therefore he wore various
disguises to prevent them from recognizing him.
Sometimes he wore his lip plug, his gold earrings and all the rest of his full regalia, but left his
head uncovered to show that he was an Otomi. At other times he wore only his cotton armor,
with a thin kerchief wrapped around his head. At still other times, he put on the finery of the
priests who cast the victims into the fire: ” a plumed headdress with the eagle symbol on its crest,
and gleaming gold bracelets on both arms, and circular bands of gleaming gold on both ankles.
The Spaniards came back again the next day. They brought their ships to a point just off
Nonohualco, close to the place called the House of Mist. Their other troops arrived on foot,
along with the Tlaxcaltecas. As soon as they had formed ranks, they charged the Aztec warriors.
The heaviest fighting began when they entered Nonohualco. None of our enemies and none of
our own warriors escaped harm. Everyone was wounded, and the toll of the dead was grievous
on both sides. The struggle continued all day and all night.
Only three captains never retreated. They were contemptuous of their enemies and gave no
thought whatever to their own safety. The first of these heroes was Tzoyectzin; the second,
Temoctzin; and the third, the great Tzilacatzin.
At last the Spaniards were too exhausted to keep on fighting. After one final attempt to break the
Aztec ranks, they withdrew to their camp to rest and recover, with their allies trailing behind.
Chapter Twelve
Spanish Raids into the Besieged City
Introduction
The native documents describing the long siege of Tenochtitlan present a number of vivid and
dramatic scenes. We have selected the account by Sahagun’s informants preserved in the Codex
Florentino.
During one of the first attacks by the Spaniards, the Aztecs took fifteen prisoners and then
sacrificed them within sight of their Comrades, who were watching helplessly from the
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barkentines. The text also describes the tragic suffering of the besieged inhabitants, the Spanish
raid on the Tlatelolco market place, the burning of the temple, and the almost incredible courage
with which the Aztecs again and again drove back the invaders.
The narrative continues with a description of how the Spaniards set up a catapult on the platform
of the small temple in the Tlatelolco market, and concludes with the final efforts of the Aztecs to
save their capital. Cuauhtemoc, who had succeeded his uncle Cuitlahuac when the latter died of
the plague, decided to dress a captain named Opochtzin in the regalia of King Ahuitzotl,
Motecuhzoma’s predecessor. It was believed that this regalia invested its wearer with the
attributes of the war god Huitzilopochtli, and that if Opochtzin could wound a Spaniard with the
sacred arrow called “the fire-serpent,” victory was still possible. The attempt was unsuccessful
and was followed by a brief period of calm that ended with the final agonies of the dying city.
Fifteen Spaniards Are Captured and Sacrificed
The warriors advanced to the sound of flutes. They shouted their war cries and beat their shields
like drums. They pursued the Spaniards, harried and terrified them, and at last took fifteen of
them prisoners. The rest of the Spaniards retreated to their ships and sailed out into the middle of
the lake.
The prisoners were sacrificed in the place called Tlacochcalco [House of the Arsenal]. Their
captors quickly plundered them, seizing their weapons, their cotton armor and everything else,
until they stood naked. Then they were sacrificed to the god, while their comrades on the lake
watched them being put to death.
Two of the barkentines sailed to Xocotitlan again. They anchored there, and the Spaniards began
attacking the houses along the shore. But when Tzilacatzin and other warriors saw what was
happening, they ran to the defense and drove the invaders into the water.
On another occasion, the barkentines approached Coyo nacazco to attack the houses. As the
ships closed in, a few Spaniards jumped out, ready for battle. They were led by Castaneda and by
Xicotencatl, who was wearing his headdress of quetzal feathers.
Then Castaneda shot the catapult. It struck one of the Aztecs in the forehead and he fell dead
where he was standing. The warriors charged the Spaniards, driving them into the water, and
then loosed a hail of stones from their slings. Castaneda would have been killed in this action if a
barkentine had not taken him aboard and sailed away toward Xocotitlan.
Another barkentine was anchored near the turn in the Wall, and still another near Teotlecco,
where the road runs straight to Tepetzinco. They were stationed as guards in order to control the
lake. They sailed away that night, but after a few days they came back again to their stations.
The Spaniards advanced from the direction of Cuahuecatitlan. Their allies from Tlaxcala,
Acolhuacan and Chalco filled up the canal so that the army could pass. They threw in adobe
bricks and all the woodwork of the nearby houses: the lintels, the doorjambs, the beams and
pillars. They even threw canestalks and rushes into the water.
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The Spaniards Attack Again
When the canal had been filled up, the Spaniards marched over it. They advanced cautiously,
with their standard-bearer in the lead, and they beat their drums and played their chirimias as
they came. The Tlaxcaltecas and the other allies followed close behind. The Tlaxcaltecas held
their heads high and pounded their breasts with their hands, hoping to frighten us
with their arrogance and courage. They sang songs as they marched, but the Aztecs were also
singing. It was as if both sides were- challenging each other with their songs. They sang
whatever they happened to remember and the music strengthened their hearts.
The Aztec warriors hid when the enemy reached solid ground. They crouched down to make
themselves as small as possible and waited for the signal, the shout that told them it was the
moment to stand up and attack. Suddenly they heard it: “Mexicanos, now is the time! “
The captain Hecatzin leaped up and raced toward the Spaniards, shouting: “Warriors of
Tlatelolco, now is the time! Who are these barbarians? Let them come ahead! ” He attacked one
of the Spaniards and knocked him to the ground, but the Spaniard also managed to knock
Hecatzin down. The captain got up and clubbed the Spaniard again, and other warriors rushed
forward to drag him away.
Then all the Aztecs sprang up and charged into battle. The Spaniards were so astonished that
they blundered here and there Eke drunkards; they ran through the streets with the warriors in
pursuit. This was when the taking of captives began. A great many of the allies from Tlaxcala,
Acolhuacan, Chalco and Xochimilco were overpowered by the Aztecs, and there was a great
harvesting of prisoners, a great reaping of victims to be sacrificed.
The Spaniards and their allies waded into the lake because the road had become too slippery for
them. The mud was so slick that they sprawled and floundered and could not stand up to fight.
The Aztecs seized them as captives and dragged them across the mud.
The Spanish standard was taken and carried off during this encounter. The warriors from
Tlatelolco, captured it in the place known today as San Martin, but they were scornful of their
prize and considered it of little importance.
Some of the Spaniards were able to escape with their lives. They retreated in the direction of
Culhuacan, on the edge of the canal, and gathered there to recover their strength.
Fifty-three Spaniards Are Sacrificed
The Aztecs took their prisoners to Yacacolco, hurrying them along the road under the strictest
guard. Some of the captives were weeping, some were keening, and others were beating their
palms against their mouths.
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When they arrived in Yacacolco, they were lined up in long rows. One by one they were forced
to climb to the temple platform, where they were sacrificed by the priests. The Spaniards went
first, then their allies, and all were put to death.
As soon as the sacrifices were finished, the Aztecs ranged the Spaniards’ heads in rows on pikes.
They also lined up their horses’ heads. They placed the horses’ heads at the bottom and the heads
of the Spaniards above, and arranged them all so that the faces were toward the sun. However,
they did not display any of the allies’ heads. All told, fifty-three Spaniards and four horses were
sacrificed there in Yacacolco.
The fighting continued in many different places. At one point, the allies from Xochimilco
surrounded us in their canoes, and the toll of the dead and captured was heavy on both sides.
The Sufferings of the Inhabitants
The Spanish blockade caused great anguish in the city. The people were tormented by hunger,
and many starved to death. There was no fresh water to drink,’ only stagnant water and the brine
of the lake, and many people died of dysentery. The only food was lizards, swallows, corncobs
and the salt grasses of the lake. The people also ate water lilies and the seeds of the colorin, and
chewed on deerhides and pieces of leather. They roasted and seared and scorched whatever they
could find and then ate it. They ate the bitterest weeds and even dirt.
Nothing can compare with the horrors of that siege and the agonies of the starving. We were so
weakened by hunger that, little by little, the enemy forced us to retreat. Little by little they forced
us to the wall.
The Battle in the Market Place
On one occasion, four Spanish cavalrymen entered the market place. They rode through it in a
great circle, stabbing and killing many of our warriors and trampling everything under their
horses’ hooves. This was the first time the Spaniards
had entered the market place, and our warriors were taken by surprise. But when the horsemen
withdrew, the warriors recovered their wits and ran in pursuit.
It was at this same time that the Spaniards set fire to the temple and burned it to the ground. The
flames and smoke leaped high into the air with a terrible roar. The people wept when they saw
their temple on fire; they wept and cried out, fearing that afterward it would be plundered.
The battle lasted for many hours and extended to almost every corner of the market place. There
was no action along the wall where the vendors sold lime, but the fighting raged among the
flower stalls, and the stalls offering snails, and all the passageways between them.
Some of our warriors stationed themselves on the rooftops of the Quecholan district, which is
near the entrance to the market place, and from there they hurled stones and fired arrows at the
enemy. Others broke holes in the rear walls of all the houses of Quecholan, holes just big enough
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for a man’s body to pass through. When the cavalry attacked and were about to spear our
warriors, or trample them, or cut off their retreat, they slipped through the holes and the mounted
men could not follow.
Other Battles
On another occasion the Spaniards entered Atliyacapan. They ransacked the houses and captured
a number of prisoners, but when the warriors saw what was happening, they loosed their arrows
and rushed forward to attack. The leader of this attack a valiant chief named Axoquentzin,
pressed the enemy so hard that they were forced to release their prisoners and drop all their
spoils. But this great chief died when a Spanish sword entered his breast and found his heart.
There were other battles in Yacacolco, where the enemy killed many of the Aztecs with their
crossbows. The warriors drew back and tried to waylay the rear guard, but a few of the allies saw
them and climbed to the rooftops. They cried: “Warriors of Tlaxcala, come here! Your enemies
are here! ” The Tlaxcaltecas shot so many arrows at the men in ambush that they had to break
and run.
Later in the day, the Aztecs put up a much stronger resistance, and the Spaniards and their allies
could not break their ranks. The Tlatelolcas took up positions on the opposite side of the canal,
hurling stones and shooting arrows across it. The enemy could not advance or capture any of the
bridges.
The Catapult Is Set Up in the Market Place
During this time, the Spaniards mounted a wooden catapult on the temple platform to fling
stones at the Indians. While it was being set up, the Indians who had gathered in Amaxac came
out to stare at it. They pointed at the machine and asked each other what it could be. When the
Spaniards had finished their preparations and were ready to shoot it at the crowd, they wound it
up until the wooden beams stood erect. Then they released it like a great sling.
But the stone did not fall among the Indians. It flew over their heads and crashed into a corner of
the market place. This seemed to cause an argument among the Spaniards: they gestured toward
the Indians and shouted at each other. But still they could not aim the machine correctly. It threw
out its stones in every direction.
Finally the Indians were able to see how it worked: it had a sling inside it, worked by a heavy
rope. The Indians named it “the wooden sling.”
The Spaniards and Tlaxcaltecas retreated again, marching back to Yacacolco and Tecpancaltitlan
in closed ranks. Their leader was directing the campaign against us from his headquarters in
Acocolecan.
The Aztec Defense
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Our warriors rallied to defend the city. Their spirits and courage were high; not one of them
showed any fear or behaved like a woman. They cried: “Mexicanos, come here and join us! Who
are these savages? A mere rabble from the south!”‘ They did not move in a direct line; they
moved in a zigzag course, never in a straight line.
The Spanish soldiers often disguised themselves so that they would not be recognized. They
wore cloaks like those of the Aztecs and put on the same battle dress and adornments, hoping to
deceive our warriors into thinking they were not Spaniards.
Whenever the Aztecs saw the enemy notching their arrows, they either dispersed or flattened
themselves on the ground. The warriors of Tlatelolco were very alert; they were very cautious
and vigilant, and watched intently to see where the shots were coming from.
But step by step the Spaniards gained more ground and captured more houses. They forced us
backward along the Amaxac road with their spears and shields.
The Quetzal-Owl
Cuauhtemoc consulted with a group of his captains and then called in a great captain named
Opochtzin, who was a dyer by trade. They dressed him in the finery of the Quetzal owl, which
had belonged to King Ahuitzotl. Then Cuauhtemoc said to him: “This regalia belonged to my
father, the great warrior Ahuitzotl. Terrify our enemies with it. Annihilate our enemies with it.
Let them behold it and tremble.”
The king ordered four captains to go with Opochtzin as a rear guard. He placed in the captain’s
hands the magic object that was the most important part of the regalia.. This was an arrow with a
long shaft and an obsidian tip.
The captain Tlacotzin said: “Mexicanos, the power of Huitzilopochtli resides in this finery.
Loose the sacred arrow at our enemies, for it is the Serpent of Fire, the Arrow that Pierces the
Fire. Loose it at the invaders; drive them away with the power of Huitzilopochtli. But shoot it
straight and well, for it must not fall to earth. And if it should wound one or two of our foes, then
we shall still have a little time left and a chance to conquer their.. Now, let us see what the god’s
will may be! “
The Quetzal-Owl departed with the four captains, and the quetzal feathers seemed to open out,
making him appear even greater and more terrifying. When our enemies saw him approach, they
quaked as if they thought a mountain were about to fall on them. They trembled with dread, as if
they knew the finery could work magic.
The Quetzal-Owl climbed up onto a rooftop. When our enemies saw him, they came forward and
prepared to attack him, but he succeeded in driving them away. Then he came down from the
rooftop with his quetzal feathers and his gold ornaments. He was not killed in this action and our
enemies could not capture the feathers or the gold. Three of the enemy soldiers were taken
prisoner.
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Suddenly the battle ended. Neither side moved against the other; the night was calm and silent,
with no incidents of any kind. On the following day, absolutely nothing took place, and neither
the Spaniards nor the Indians spoke a word. The Indians waited in their defense works, and the
Spaniards waited in their positions. Each side watched the other closely but made no plans for
launching an attack. Both sides passed the whole day in this fashion, merely watching and
waiting.
Chapter Thirteen
The Surrender of Tenochtitlan
Introduction
The texts in this chapter have been taken from three different indigenous sources. The first
selection, by Sahagun’s native informants, describes a final omen that presaged the imminent
destruction of the Aztec capital. According to this account, it was Cuauhtemoc himself who
surrendered Tenochtitlan to the Spaniards. The informants also give an eloquent description of
the tragic scenes that accompanied the taking of the city.
The second selection is from the XII relacion by Alva Ixthlilxochitl. Its most memorable passage
is the moment when Cuauhtemoc was brought face to face with Cortes. The king placed his hand
on the conquistador’s dagger and begged him to kill him with it, since he had already destroyed
the kingdom.
The last selection is from the VII relacion by Chimalpain, and was translated from Nahuatl to
Spanish by Miguel Leon-Portilla. It describes how Cortes bullied and even tortured the Aztec
lords in order to obtain the gold and other valuables that the Indians had treasured since ancient
times.
The Final Omen
(From the Codex Florentino by Sahagun’s informants)
At nightfall it began to rain, but it was more like a heavy dew than a rain. Suddenly the omen
appeared, blazing like a great bonfire in the sky. It wheeled in enormous spirals like a whirlwind
and gave off a shower of sparks and red-hot coals, some great and some little. It also made loud
noises, rumbling and hissing like a metal tube placed over a fire. It circled the wall nearest the
lakeshore and then hovered for a while above Coyonacazco. From there it moved out into the
middle of the lake, where it suddenly disappeared. No one cried out when this omen came into
view: the people knew what it meant and they watched it in silence.
Nothing whatever occurred on the following day. Our warriors and the Spanish soldiers merely
waited in their positions. Cortes kept a constant watch, standing under a many colored canopy on
the roof of the lord Aztautzin’s house, which is near Amaxac. His officers stood around him,
talking among themselves.
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Cuauhtemoc’s Surrender
The Aztec leaders gathered in Tolmayecan to discuss what they should do. Cuauhtemoc and the
other nobles tried to determine how much tribute they would have to pay and how best to
surrender to the strangers. Then the nobles put Cuauhtemoc into a war canoe, with only three
men to accompany him: a captain named Teputztitloloc, a servant named Iaztachimal and a
boatman named Cenyautl. When the people saw their chief departing, they wept and cried out:
“Our youngest prince is leaving us! He is going to surrender to the Spaniards! He is going to
surrender to the ‘gods’!
The Spaniards came out to meet him. They took him by the hand, led him up to the rooftop and
brought him into the presence of Cortes. The Captain stared at him for a moment and then patted
him on the head. Then he gestured toward a chair and the two leaders sat down side by side.
The Spaniards began to shoot off their cannons, but they were not trying to hit anyone. They
merely loaded and fired, and the cannonballs flew over the Indians’ heads. Later they put one of
the cannons into a boat and took it to the house of Coyohuehuetzin, where they hoisted it to the
rooftop.
The Flight from the City
Once again the Spaniards started killing and a great many Indians died. The flight from the city
began and with this the war came to an end. The people cried: “We have suffered enough! Let us
leave the city! Let us go live on weeds! ” Some fled across the lake, others along the causeways,
and even then there were many killings. The Spaniards were angry because our warriors still
carried their shields and macanas.
Those who lived in the center of the city went straight toward Amaxac, to the fork in the road.
From there they fled in various directions, some toward Tepeyacac, others toward Xoxohuiltitlan
and Nonohualco; but no one went toward Xoloco or Mazatzintamalco. Those who lived in boats
or on the wooden rafts anchored in the lake fled by water, as did the inhabitants of Tolmayecan.
Some of them waded in water up to their chests and even up to their necks. Others drowned
when they reached water above their heads.
The grownups carried their young children on their shoulders. Many of the children were
weeping with terror, but a few of them laughed and smiled, thinking it was great sport to be
carried like that along the road.
Some of the people who owned canoes departed in the daytime, but the others, the majority, left
by night. They almost crashed into each other in their haste as they paddled away from the city.
The Spaniards Humiliate the Refugees
The Spanish soldiers were stationed along the roads to search the fleeing inhabitants. They were
looking only for gold and paid no attention to jade, turquoise or quetzal feathers. The women
carried their gold under their skirts and the men carried it in their mouths or under their
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loincloths. Some of the women, knowing they would be searched if they looked prosperous,
covered their faces with mud and dressed themselves in rags. They put on rags for skirts and rags
for blouses; everything they wore was in tatters. But the Spaniards searched all the women
without exception: those with light skins, those with dark skins, those with dark bodies.
A few of the men were separated from the others. These men were the bravest and strongest
warriors, the warriors with manly hearts. The youths who served them were also told to stand
apart. The Spaniards immediately branded them with hot irons, either on the cheek or the lips.
The day on which we laid down our shields and admitted defeat was the day 1-Serpent in the
year 3-House. When Cuauhtemoc surrendered, the Spaniards hurried him to Acachinanco at
night, but on the following day, just after sunrise, many of them came back again. They were
dressed for battle, with their coats of mail and their metal helmets, but they had left their swords
and shields behind. They all tied white handkerchiefs over their noses because they were
sickened by the stench of the rotting bodies. They came back on foot, dragging Cuauhtemoc,
Coanacotzin and Tetlepanquetzaltzin by their cloaks.
Cortes Demands Gold
When the fighting had ended, Cortes demanded the gold his men had abandoned in the Canal of
the Toltecs during the Night of Sorrows. He called the chiefs together and asked them: “Where is
the gold you were hiding in the city?”
The Aztecs unloaded it from canoes: there were bars of gold, gold crowns, gold ornaments for
the arms and legs, gold helmets and disks of gold. They heaped it in front of the Captain, and the
Spaniards came forward to take possession of it. Cortes said: “Is this all the gold in the city? You
must bring me all of it.”
Tlacotzin replied: “I beg the lord to hear me. All the gold we owned was kept in our palaces. Is it
not true that our lords took all of it with them?”
La Malinche told Cortes what Tlacotzin had said. Then ,he translated the Captain’s answer: “Yes,
it is true. We took it and stamped it with our seal. But we lost in the Canal of the Toltecs when
your warriors surprised us. You must bring all back.”
Tlacotzin replied: “I beg the god to hear me. The people of Tenochtitlan do not know how to
fight in canoes; it is not their custom. This is done only by the people of Tlatelolco, who fought
in canoes to defend themselves from your attacks. Is it not possible that the Tlatelolcas took the
gold? “
Then Cuauhtemoc said to Tlacotzin: “Yes, it is very possible. Our lords may have taken the
wrong people prisoners. Everything suggests it. The rest of the gold must be in Texopan. The
gold our lords took is here.” Cuauhtemoc pointed at the heap they had unloaded from the canoes.
The Captain replied: “Only this little? “
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Tlacotzin said: “Perhaps someone has stolen the rest. Why not search for it? Why not bring it to
light? “
La Malinche told him what the Captain replied: “You must bring us two hundred bars of gold of
this size.” And she held her hands apart to show them the size.
Tlacotzin said: “Perhaps some woman has hidden the gold under her skirts. Why not search for
it? Why not bring it to fight?”
Ahuelitoc the Mixcoatlailotlac said: “I beg our lord and master to hear me. Even as late as the
reign of Motecuhzoma, the Tepanecas. and the Acolhuas joined the people of Tenochtitlan and
Tlatelolco in conquering our enemies. We all went out together to defeat them; and when they
had surrendered, we each went back to our own city. Then the conquered tribes brought us the
tribute we had imposed: quetzal feathers, gold, jade, turquoise and other kinds of precious stones,
as well as birds with rich plumage, such as the bluejay and the bird with a crimson ruff. All these
things were brought here to Tenochtitlan: all the tribute, all the gold. . . .”
The Ravage of Tenochtitlan
(From the XII relacion by Alva Ixtilxochitl)
On the day that Tenochtitlan was taken, the Spaniards committed some of the most brutal acts
ever inflicted upon the unfortunate people of this land. The cries of the helpless women and
children were heart-rending. The Tlaxcaltecas and the other enemies of the Aztecs revenged
themselves pitilessly for old offenses and robbed them of everything they could find. Only
Prince Ixtlilxochitl of Tezcoco, ally of Cortes, felt compassion for the Aztecs, because they were
of his own homeland. He kept his followers from maltreating the women and children as cruelly
as did Cortes and the Spaniards.
At nightfall the invading forces retired again. Prince Ixtlilxochitl, Cortes and the other captains
agreed to complete the conquest of the city on the following day, the day of St. Hippolytus the
Martyr. Shortly after daybreak, they approached the place where the remnants of the enemy were
gathered. Cortes marched through the streets, but Ixtlilxochitl and Sandoval, the captain of the
brigantines, approached by water. Ixtlilxochitl had been informed that Cuauhtemoc and his
followers were assembling for escape in their canoes.
The anguish and bewilderment of our foes was pitiful to see. The warriors gathered on the
rooftops and stared at the ruins of their city in a dazed silence, and the women and children and
old men were all weeping. The lords and nobles crowded into the canoes with their king.
The Capture of Cuauhtemoc
At a given signal, our forces attacked the enemy all at once. We pressed forward so swiftly that
within a few hours we had totally defeated them. Our brigantines and canoes attacked their
flotilla; they could not withstand us but scattered in every direction, with our forces pursuing
them. Garcia de Olguin, who commanded one of the brigantines, was told by an Aztec prisoner
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that the canoe he was following was that of the king. He bore down on it and gradually caught up
with it.
Cuauhtemoc, seeing that the enemy was overtaking him, ordered the boatman to turn the canoe
toward our barkentine and prepare to attack it. He grasped his shield and macana and was
determined to give battle. But when he realized that the enemy could overwhelm him with
crossbows and muskets, he put down his arms and surrendered.
Cuauhtemoc Acknowledges His Defeat
Garcia de Olguin brought him before Cortes, who received him with all the respect due to a king.
Cuauhtemoc placed his hand on the Captain’s dagger and said: I have done everything in my
power to save my kingdom from your hands. Since fortune has been against me, I now beg you
to take my life. This would put an end to the kingship of Mexico, and it would be just and right,
for you have already destroyed my city and killed my people.” He spoke other grief-stricken
words, which touched the heart of everyone Who heard them.
Cortes consoled him and asked him to command his warriors to surrender. Cuauhtemoc
immediately climbed onto a high tower and shouted to them to cease fighting, for everything had
fallen to the enemy. Of the 300,000 warriors who had defended the city, 60,000 were left. When
they heard their king, they laid down their arms and the nobles came forward to comfort him.
Ixtlilxochitl was eager to clasp Cuauhtemoc’s hand. The prince arrived in one of the two
brigantines that were taking various lords and ladies to Cortes; among these were
Tlacahuepantzin, son of Motecuhzoma, and Queen Papantzin Oxomoc, widow of Cuitlahuac.
Ixtlilxochitl led them into the Captain’s presence. Then he ordered that the queen and the other
ladies be taken to Tezcoco and held there under guard.
That same day, after looting the city, the Spaniards apportioned all the gold and silver among
themselves, leaving the feathers and precious stones for the nobles of Tezcoco and the cloaks and
other objects for their warriors.
The Length of the Siege
The siege of Tenochtitlan, according to the histories, paintings and chronicles, lasted exactly
eighty days. Thirty thousand men from the kingdom of Tezcoco were killed during this time, of
the more than 200,000 who fought on the side of the Spaniards. Of the Aztecs, more than
240,000 were killed. Almost all of the nobility perished: there remained alive only a few lords
and knights and the little children.
Cortes Deals with the Nobles and Priests
(From the VII relacion by Chimalpain)
When the arms and trappings of war had been put aside, the lords were brought together in
Acachinanco. These were Cuauhtemoc, lord of Tenochtitlan; Tlacotzin, the serpent woman;
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Oquiztzin, lord of Azcapotzalco; Panitzin, lord of Ecatepec; and Motelhuihtzin, the royal
steward. The lastnamed was not a prince, but he was a great captain during the war. Cortes
ordered that they be bound and taken to Coyoacan. Panitzin, however, was not bound. At
Coyoacan they were thrown into prison, where the Spaniards burned their feet.
It was at this same time that the Spaniards questioned the priests Cuauhcoatl, Cohuayhuitl,
Tecohuentzin and Tetlanmecatl about the gold that had been lost in the Canal of the Toltecs. The
Spaniards also demanded the eight bars of gold that had been stored in the palace under the care
of the steward Ocuitecatl. The steward had died of smallpox during the plague. Only his son was
left; and when he discovered that four of the eight bars had disappeared, he immediately fled.
The five lords who had been taken to Coyoacan were led from the prison, and Cortes addressed
them through his interpreters, Jeronimo de Aguilar and La Malinche: “I want to know who the
rulers of the city were, and also who ruled the Tepanecas and the people of Acolhuacan, Chalco
and Xochimilco.”
The five lords deliberated for a while. Then Tlacotzin said: “I beg the god to hear these few
words of mine. I had no lands whatever when I first came here; the Tepanecas, the Acolhuas and
the people of Chalco and Xochimilco all had lands. I made myself their lord with arrows and
shields, and took possession of their lands. But what I did was no more than what you have done,
for you also have come here with arrows and shields to capture all our cities.”
When the Captain heard this, he turned to the other lords, and spoke in a voice ringing with
authority: “He came here with arrows and shields to seize your lands. He forced you to be his
servants. But now that I have come, I set you free. You are no longer his vassals. Your lands are
your own again.”
Chapter Fourteen
The Story of the Conquest as Told by the Anonymous Authors of Tlatelolco
Introduction
In the thirteen preceding chapters we have presented the Story of the Conquest in selections from
various native sources, arranged according to the chronological sequence of events. Now, as a
recapitulation, we offer another indigenous account. It describes all the major incidents of the
Conquest in briefer form, but it also contains a considerable amount of material that cannot be
found in other documents. Therefore it is not a mere summary but an important, independent
narrative. As such, it inevitably introduces a number of discrepancies, both with the texts we
have presented earlier and with the Spanish chronicles of Bernal Diaz and others.
This account was written in Nahuatl in 1528 by anonymous authors in Tlatelolco. Like several of
the texts by Sahagun’s native informants, it reflects the pride of the Tlatelolcas in their home
quarter of the city. It is probably the oldest prose document of all those drawn upon in this book.
The original is now in the National Library in Paris, where it forms part of Unos anales historicos
de la nacion mexicana-the so-called Manuscript.
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The Arrival of Cortes
Year 13-Rabbit. The Spaniards were sighted off the coast. Year I-Canestalk. The Spaniards came
to the palace at Tlayacac. When the Captain arrived at the palace, Motecuhzoma sent the
Cuetlaxtecal to greet him and to bring him two suns as gifts. One of these suns was made of the
yellow metal, the other of the white. The Cuetlaxteca also brought him a mirror to be hung on his
person, a gold collar, a great gold pitcher, fans and ornaments of quetzal feathers and a shield
inlaid with mother-of-pearl.
The envoys made sacrifices in front of the Captain. At this, he grew very angry. When they
offered him blood in an “eagle dish,” he shouted at the man who offered it and struck him with
his sword. The envoys departed at once.
All the gifts which the Cuetlaxteca brought to the Captain were sent by Motecuhzoma. That is
why the Cuetlaxteca went to meet the Captain at Tlayacac: he was only performing his dudes as
a royal envoy.
Then the Captain marched to Tenochtitlan. He arrived here during the month called Bird,8 under
the sign of the day one hundred and twenty-eight 8-Wind. When he entered the city, we gave
him chickens, eggs, corn, tortillas and drink. We also gave him firewood, and fodder for his
“deer.” Some of these gifts were sent by the lord of Tenochtitlan, the rest by the lord of
Tlatelolco.
Later the Captain marched back to the coast, leaving Don Pedro de Alvarado-The Sun-in
command.
The Massacre in the Main Temple
During this time, the people asked Motecuhzoma how they should celebrate their god’s fiesta. He
said: “Dress him in all his finery, in all his sacred ornaments.”
During this same time, The Sun commanded that Motecuhzoma and Itzcohuatzin, the military
chief of Tlatelolco, be made prisoners. The Spaniards hanged a chief from Acolhuacan named
Nezahualquentzin. They also murdered the king of Nauhtla, Cohualpopocatzin, by wounding
him with arrows and then burning him alive.
For this reason, our warriors were on guard at the Eagle Gate. The sentries from Tenochtitlan
stood at one side of the gate, and the sentries from Tlatelolco at the other. But messengers came
to tell them to dress the figure of Huitzilopochtli. They left their posts and went to dress him in
his sacred finery: his ornaments and his paper clothing.
When this had been done, the celebrants began to sing their songs. That is how they celebrated
the first day of the fiesta. On the second day they began to sing again, but without warning they
were all put to death. The dancers and singers were completely unarmed. They brought only their
embroidered cloaks, their turquoises, their lip plugs, their necklaces, their clusters of heron
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feathers, their trinkets made of deer hooves. Those who played the drums, the old men, had
brought their gourds of snuff and their timbrels.
The Spaniards attacked the musicians first, slashing at their hands and faces until they had killed
all of them. The singers-and even the spectators-were also killed. This slaughter in the Sacred
Patio went on for three hours. Then the Spaniards burst into the rooms of the temple to kill the
others: those who were carrying water, or bringing fodder for the horses, or grinding meal, or
sweeping, or standing watch over this work.
The king Motecuhzoma, who was accompanied by Itzcohuatzin and by those who had brought
food for the Spaniards, protested: “Our lords, that is enough! What are you doing? These people
are not carrying shields or macanas. Our lords, they are completely unarmed!”
The Sun treacherously murdered our people on the twentieth day after the Captain left for the
coast. We allowed the Captain to return to the city in peace. But on the following day we
attacked him with all our might, and that was the beginning of the war.
The Night of Sorrows
The Spaniards attempted to slip out of the city at night, but we attacked furiously at the Canal of
the Toltecs, and many of them died. This took place during the fiesta of Tecuilhuitl. The
survivors gathered first at Mazatzintamalco and waited for the stragglers to come up.
Year 2-Flint. This was the year in which Motecuhzoma died. Itzcohuatzin of Tlatelolco died at
the same time.
The Spaniards took refuge in Acueco, but they were driven out by our warriors. They fled to
Teuhcalhueyacan and from there to Zoltepec. Then they marched through Citlaltepec and
camped in Temazcalapan, where the people gave them hens, eggs and corn.. They rested for a
short while and marched on to Tlaxcala.
Soon after, an epidemic broke out in Tenochtitlan. Almost the whole population suffered from
racking coughs and painful, burning sores.
The Spaniards Return
When the epidemic had subsided a little, the Spaniards marched out of Tlaxcala. The first place
they attacked and conquered was Tepeyacac. They departed from there during the fiesta of
Tlahuano, and they arrived in Tlapechhuan during the fiesta of Izcalli. Twenty days later they
marched to TezCoco, where they remained for forty days. Then they reached Tlacopan and
established themselves in the palace.
There was no fighting of any kind while they were in Tlacopan. At the end of a week they all
marched back to Tez Coco.
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Eighty days later they went to Huaxtepec and Cuauhnahuac, and from there they attacked
Xochimilco. A great many Tlatelolcas died in chat battle. Then the Spaniards returned to
Tezcoco again.
Year 3-House. The Aztecs began to fight among themselves. The princes Tzihuacpopocatzin and
Cicpatzin Tecuecuenotzin were put to death, as were Axayaca and Xoxopehualoc, the sons of
Motecuhzoma. These princes were killed because they tried to persuade the people to bring corn,
hens and eggs to the Spaniards. They were killed by the priests, captains and elder brothers.
But the great chiefs were angry at these executions. They said to the murderers: “Have we
ourselves become assassins? Only sixty days ago, our people were slaughtered at the fiesta of
Toxcatl!”
The Siege of Tenochtitlan
Now the Spaniards began to wage war against us. They attacked us by land for ten days, and then
their ships appeared. Twenty days later, they gathered all their ships together near Nonohualco,
off the place called Mazatzintamalco. The allies from Tlaxcala and Huexotzinco set up camp on
either side of the road.
Our warriors from Tlatelolco immediately leaped into, their canoes and set out for
Mazatzintamalco and the Nonohualco road. But no one set out from Tenochtitlan to assist us:,
only the Tlatelolcas were ready when the Spaniards arrived in their ships. On the following day,
the ships sailed to Xoloco.
The fighting at Xoloco and Huitzillan lasted for two days. While the battle was under way, the
warriors from Tenochtitlan began to mutiny. They said: “Where are our chiefs? They. have fired
scarcely a single arrow! Do they think they have, fought like men?” Then they seized four of
their own leaders and put them to death. The victims were two captains, Cuauhnochtli and
Cuapan, and the priests of Amantlan and Tlalocan. This was the second time that the people of
Tenochtitlan killed their own leaders.
The Flight to Tlatelolco
The Spaniards set up two cannons in the middle of the road and aimed them at the city. When
they fired them, one of the shots struck the Eagle Gate. The people of the city were so terrified
that they began to flee to Tlatelolco. They brought their idol Huitzilopochtli with them, setting it
up in the House of the Young Men. Their king Cuauhtemoc also abandoned Tenochtitlan. Their
chiefs said: “Mexicanos! Tlatelolcas! All is not lost! We can still defend our houses. We can
prevent them from capturing our storehouses and the produce of our lands. We can save the
sustenance of life, our stores of corn. We can also save our weapons and insignia, our clusters of
rich feathers, our gold earrings and precious stones. Do not be discouraged; do not lose heart. We
are Mexicanos! We are Tlatelolcas! “
During the whole time we were fighting, the warriors of Tenochtitlan were nowhere to be seen.
The battles at Yacacolco, Atezcapan, Coatlan, Nonohualco, Xoxohuitlan, Tepeyacac and
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elsewhere were all fought by ourselves, by Tlatelolcas. In the same way, the canals were
defended solely by Tlatelolcas.
The captains from Tenochtitlan cut their hair short, and so did those of lesser rank. The Otomies
and the other ranks that usually wore headdresses did not wear them during all the time we were
fighting. The Tlatelolcas surrounded the most important captains and their women taunted them:
“Why are you hanging back? Have you no shame? No woman will ever paint her face for you
again!” The wives of the men from Tenochtitlan wept and begged for pity.
When the warriors of Tlatelolco heard what was happening, they began to shout, but still the
brave captains of Tenochtitlan hung back. As for the Tlatelolcas, their hum warriors died fighting
as bravely as their captains.
The Tlatelolcas Are Invited to Make a Treaty
A Spaniard named Castaneda approached us in Yauhtenco. He was accompanied by a group of
Tlaxcaltecas, who shouted at the guards on the watchtower near the breakwater. These guards
were Itzpalanqui, the captain of Chapultepec: two captains from Tlapala; and Cuexacaltzin.
Castaneda shouted to them: “Come here!”
“What do you want?” they asked him. “We will come closer.” They got into a boat and
approached to within speaking distance. “Now, what have you to say to us?”
The Tlaxcaltecas asked: “Where are you from?” And when they learned that the guards were
from Tlatelolco, they said: “Good, you are the men we are looking for. Come with us. The ‘god’
has sent for you.”
The guards went with Castaneda to Nonohualco. The Captain was in the House of the Mist there,
along with La Malinche, The Sun (Alvarado) and Sandoval. A number of the native lords were
also present and they told the Captain: “The Tlatelolcas have arrived. We sent for them to come
here.”
La Malinche said to the guards: “Come forward! The Captain wants to know: what can the chiefs
of Tenochtitlan be thinking of? Is Cuauhtemoc a stupid, willful little boy? Has he no mercy on
the women and children of his city? Must even the old men perish? See, the kings of Tlaxcala,
Huexotzinco, Cholula, Chalco, Acolhuacan, Cuauhnahuac, Xochimilco, Mizquic, Cuitlahuac and
Culhuacan are all here with me.”
One of the kings said: “Do the people of Tenochtitlan think they are playing a game? Already
their hearts are grieving for the city in which they were born. If they will not surrender, we
should abandon them and let them perish by themselves. Why should the Tlatelolcas feel sorry
when the people of Tenochtitlan bring a senseless destruction on themselves?”
The guards from Tlatelolco said: “Our lords, it may be as you say.”
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The “god” said: “Tell Cuauhtemoc that the other kings have all abandoned him. I will go to
Teocalhueyacan, where his forces are gathered, and I will send the ships to Coyoacan.”
The guards returned to speak with the followers of Cuauhtemoc. They shouted the message to
them from their boats. But the Tlatelolcas would not abandon the people of Tenochtitlan.
The Fighting Is Renewed
The Spaniards made ready to attack us, and the war broke out again. They assembled their forces
in Cuepopan and Cozcacuahco. A vast number of our warriors were killed by their metal darts.
Their ships sailed to Texopan, and the battle there lasted three days. When they had forced us to
retreat, they entered the Sacred Patio, where there was a four-day battle. Then they reached
Yacacolco.
The Tlatelolcas set up three racks of heads in three different places. The first rack was in the
Sacred Patio of Tlilancalco [Black House], where we strung up the heads of our lords the
Spaniards. The second was in Acacolco, where we strung up Spanish heads and the heads of two
of their horses.
The third was in Zacatla, in front of the temple of the earth goddess Cihuacoatl, where we strung
up the heads of Tlaxcaltecas.
The women of Tlatelolco joined in the fighting. They struck at the enemy and shot arrows at
them; they tucked up their skirts and dressed in the regalia of war.
The Spaniards forced us to retreat. Then they occupied the market place. The Tlatelolcas-the
Jaguar Knights, the Eagle Knights, the great warriors-were defeated, and this was the end of the
battle. It had lasted five days, and two thousand Tlatelolcas were killed in action. During the
battle, the Spaniards set up a canopy for the Captain in the market place. They also mounted a
catapult on the temple platform.
Epic Description of the Besieged City
And all these misfortunes befell us. We saw them and wondered at them; we suffered this
unhappy fate.
Broken spears lie in the roads;
we have torn our hair in our grief.
The houses are roofless now, and their walls
are red with blood.
Worms are swarming in the streets and plazas,
and the walk are splattered with gore.
The water has turned red, as if it were dyed,
and when we drink it,
it has the taste of brine.
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We have pounded our hands in despair
against the adobe walls,
for our inheritance, our city, is lost and dead.
The shields of our warriors were its defense,
but they could not save it.
We have chewed dry twigs and salt grasses;
we have filled our mouths with dust and bits of adobe;
we have eaten lizards, rats and worms….
When we had meat, we ate it almost raw. It was scarcely on the fire before we snatched it and
gobbled it down.
They set a price on all of us: on the young men, the priests, the boys and girls. The price of a
poor man was only two handfuls of corn, or ten cakes made from mosses or twenty cakes of salty
couch-grass. Gold, jade, rich cloths, quetzal feathers-everything that once was precious was now
considered worthless.
The captains delivered several prisoners of war to Cuauhtemoc to be sacrificed. He performed
the sacrifices in person, cutting them open with a stone knife.
The Message from Cortes
Soon after this, the Spaniards brought Xochitl the Acolnahuacatl, whose house was in
Tenochtitlan, to the market place in Tlatelolco. They gripped him by both arms as they brought
him there. They kept him with them for twenty days and then let him go. They also brought in a
cannon, which they set up in the place where incense was sold.
The Tlatelolcas ran forward to surround Xochitl. They were led by the captain from
Huitznahuac, who was a Huasteco. Xochitl was placed under guard in the Temple of the Woman
in Axocotzinco.
As soon as the Spaniards had set Xochitl loose in the market place, they stopped attacking us.
There was no more fighting, and no prisoners were taken.
Three of the great chiefs said to Cuauhtemoc: “Our prince, the Spaniards have sent us one of the
magistrates, Xochitl the Acolnahuacatl. It is said that he has a message for you.
Cuauhtemoc asked them: “What is your advice?”
The chiefs all began to shout at once: “Let the message be brought here! We have made auguries
with paper and with incense’ The captain who seized Xochitl should bring us the message! “
The captain was sent to question Xochitl in the Temple of the Woman. Xochitl said: “The ‘god’
and La Malinche send word to Cuauhtemoc and the other princes that there is no hope for them.
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Have they no pity on the little children, the old men, the old women? What more can they do?
Everything is settled.
“You are to deliver women with light skins, corn, chickens, eggs and tortillas. This is your last
chance. The people of Tenochtitlan must choose whether to surrender or be destroyed.”
The captain reported this message to Cuauhtemoc and the lords of Tlatelolco. The lords
deliberated among themselves: “What do you think about this? What are we to do?”
The City Falls
Cuauhtemoc said to the fortune tellers: “Please come forward. What do you see in your books? “
One of the priests replied: “My prince, hear the truth that we tell you. In only four days we shall
have completed the period of eighty days. It may be the will of Huitzilopochtli that nothing
further shall happen to us. Let us wait until these four days have passed.”
But then the fighting broke out again. The captain of Huitznahuac- the same Huasteco who had
brought in Xochitl – renewed the struggle. The enemy forced us to retreat to Amaxac. When they
also attacked us there, the general flight began. The lake was full of people, and the roads leading
to the mainland were all crowded.
Thus the people of Tenochtitlan and Tlatelolco gave up the struggle and abandoned the city. We
all gathered in Amaxac. We had no shields and no macanas, we had nothing to eat and no
shelter. And it rained all night.
The People Flee the City
Cuauhtemoc was taken to Cortes along with three other princes. The Captain was accompanied
by Pedro de Alvarado and La Malinche.
When the princes were made captives, the people began to leave, searching for a place to stay.
Everyone was in tatters, and the women’s thighs were almost naked. The Christians searched all
the refugees. They even opened the women’s skirts and blouses and felt everywhere: their ears,
their breasts, their hair. Our people scattered in all directions. They went to neighboring villages
and huddled in comers in the houses of strangers.
The city was conquered in the year 3-House. The date on which we departed was the day 1-
Serpent in the ninth month.’
The lords of Tlatelolco went to Cuauhtitlan. Even the greatest captains and warriors left in
tatters. The women had only old rags to cover their heads, and they had patched together their
blouses out of many-colored scraps. The chiefs were grief- stricken and mourned to one another:
“We have been defeated a second time!
The Offering of Gold
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A poor man was treacherously killed in Otontlan as he was seeking refuge. The other refugees
were shaken by his death and began to discuss what they could do.” They said: “Let us beg
mercy of our lord the Captain.”
First the leaders of Tlatelolco demanded gold objects from everyone. They collected many lip
rings, lip plugs, nose plugs and other ornaments. They searched anyone who might be hiding
objects of gold behind his shield or under his clothing.
When they had gathered everything they could find, they sent the treasure to Coyoacan in the
custody of several chiefs. The chiefs said to the Captain: “Our lord and master, please hear us.
Your vassals, the great lords of Tlatelolco, beg you to have mercy. Your vassals and their people
are being mistreated by the inhabitants of the villages where they have taken refuge. They scorn
us and treacherously kill us.
“We have brought you these objects of gold, and we beg you to hear our pleas.”
Then they set the baskets of gold objects before him.
When the Captain and La Malinche saw the gold, they grew very angry and said: “Is this what
you have been wasting your time on? You should have been looking for the treasure that fell into
the Canal of the Toltecs! Where is it? We must have it!”
The chiefs said: “Cuauhtemoc gave it to the Cihuacoatl and the Huiznahuacatl. They know where
it is. Ask them.”
When the Captain heard this, he ordered that the chiefs be placed in chains. La Malinche came to
them later and said: “The Captain says that you may leave and speak with your leaders. He is
very grateful to you. It may be true that your people are being mistreated. Tell them to return.
Tell your people to come back to their houses in Tlatelolco. The Captain wants all the Tlatelolcas
to reoccupy their quarter of the city. But tell your leaders that no one is to settle in Tenochtitlan
itself, for that is the property of the ‘gods.’ You may leave now.”
Cuauhtemoc Is Tortured
When the envoys from Tlatelolco had departed, the leaders of Tenochtitlan were brought before
the Captain, who wished to make them talk. This was when Cuauhtemoc’s feet were burned.
They brought him in at daybreak and tied him to a stake.
They found the gold in Cuitlahuactonco, in the house of a chief named Itzpotonqui. As soon as
they had seized it, they brought our princes-all of them bound-to Coyoacan.
About this same time, the priest in charge of the temple of Huitzilopochtli was put to death. The
Spaniards had tried to learn from him where the god’s finery and that of the high priests was
kept. Later they were informed that it was being guarded by certain chiefs in Cuauhchichilco and
Xaltocan.
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They seized it and then hanged two of the chiefs in the middle of the Mazatlan road.
The Return to Tlatelolco
The common people began to return to their houses in Tlatelolco. This was in the year 4-Rabbit.
Then Tentilotzin and Don Juan Huehuetzin came back, but Coyohuehuetzin and Tepantemoctzin
both died in Cuauhtitlan.
We were left entirely alone when we reoccupied Tlatelolco. Our masters, the Spaniards, did not
seize any of our houses. They remained in Coyoacan and let us live in peace.
They hanged Macuilxochitl, the king of Huitzilopochco, in Coyoacan. They also hanged
Pizotzin, the king of Culhuacan. And they fed the Keeper of the Black House,” along with
several others, to their dogs.
And three wise men of Ehecatl, from Tezcoco, were devoured by the dogs. They had come only
to surrender; no one brought them or sent them there. They arrived bearing their painted sheets
of paper. There were four of them, and only one escaped; the other three were overtaken, there in
Coyoacan.
Chapter Fifteen
Elegies on the Fall of the City
Introduction
By way of conclusion, we present three “songs of sorrow,” true elegies written by the post-
Conquest Aztec poets. The first song, from the collection of Cantares mexicanos in the National
Library of Mexico, was probably composed in 1523. The second is part of a whole series of
poems recounting the Conquest from the arrival of the Spaniards in Tenochtitlan to the ultimate
defeat Of the Aztecs. We have selected only the most dramatic moments
from the last section of this series. The third song, also from the Cantares mexicanos, recalls the
traditional symbolism of “flowers and songs.” It laments that only grief and suffering remain in
the once proud capital.
These elegies are among the first and most poignant expressions of what Dr. Garibay has called
“the trauma of the Conquest.” They reveal, with greater eloquence than the other texts, the deep
emotional wound inflicted on the Indians by the defeat.
The Fall of Tenochtitlan
Our cries of grief rise up
and our tears rain down,
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for Tlatelolco is lost.
The Aztecs are fleeing across the lake;
they are running away like women.
How can we save our homes, my people?
The Aztecs are deserting the city:
the city is in flames, and all
is darkness and destruction.
Motelchiuhtzin the Huiznahuacatl,
Tlacotzin the Tlailotlacatl,
Oquitzin the Tlacatecuhtli
are greeted with tears.
Weep, my people:
know that with these disasters
we have lost the Mexican nation.
The water has turned bitter,
our food is bitter!
These are the acts of the Giver of Life. . .
The Imprisonment of Cuauhtemoc
The Aztecs are besieged in the city;
the Tlatelolcas are besieged in the city!
The walls are black,
the air is black with smoke,
the guns flash in the darkness.
They have captured Cuauhtemoc;
they have captured the princes of Mexico.
The Aztecs are besieged in the city;
the Tlatelolcas are besieged in the city!
After nine days, they were taken to Coyoacan:
Cuauhtemoc, Coanacoch, Tetlepanquetzaltzin.
The kings are prisoners now.
Tlacotzin consoled them:
“Oh my nephews, take heart!
The kings are prisoners now;
they are bound with chains.”
The king Cuauhtemoc replied:
“Oh my nephew, you are a prisoner;
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they have bound you in irons.
“But who is that at the side of the Captain-General?
Ah, it is Dona Isabel, my little niece!
Ah, it is true: the kings are prisoners now!
“You will be a slave and belong to another:
the collar will be fashioned in Coyoacan,
where the quetzal feathers will be woven.
Who is that at the side of the Captain-General?
Ah, it is Dona Isabel, my little niece!
Ah, it is true: the kings are prisoners now!
Flowers and Songs of Sorrow
Nothing but flowers and songs of sorrow
are left in Mexico and Tlatelolco,
where once we saw warriors and wise men.
We know it is true
that we must perish,
for we are mortal men.
You, the Giver of Life,
you have ordained it.
We wander here
and there in our desolate poverty.
We are mortal men.
We have seen bloodshed and pain
where once we saw beauty and valor.
We are crushed to the ground;
we lie in ruins.
There is nothing but grief and suffering
In Mexico and Tlatelolco,
where once we saw beauty and valor.
Have you grown weary of your servants?
Are you angry with your servants,
0 Giver of Life?
Chapter Sixteen
Aftermath
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Introduction
Broken spears lay in the road, temples, and palaces; the great market, schools, and houses were
in ruins; rulers, priests, sages, warriors, the youth, and the gods themselves were lost or dead.
The bad omens that Motecuhzoma and others contemplated had been fulfilled: The Aztec nation
appeared crushed to the ground. But was everything truly lost? The testimonies included here
demonstrate the extent to which some surviving native priests and sages managed to rescue
images of the tragedy that had taken place and the heroism that had sustained their people. In
their annals, those with detailed pictures and glyphs and those employing the letters newly
adapted by the friars to represent the sounds of their language, they recalled the ominous events,
the appearance of the unexpected invaders, the acts of bravery, the devastation.
With the passing of time, while most of the ancient sacred books had been reduced to ashes, the
elders and their sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons kept producing numerous manuscripts that
told of their daily and difficult coexistence with the men of Castile. Documents of many different
genres were composed reflecting life in these new circumstances, including many petitions
asking for justice, several chronicles made up of compilations of oral traditions, numerous songs,
poems, and theatrical pieces to be acted and sung, as well as translations or reworked versions of
works originally in Spanish or Latin. All of these form part of an unexpectedly rich literature,
which at times mixes the indigenous traditions with the content and style of what was introduced
by the Europeans. As could be expected, a recurrent theme at the time, which continues to be
addressed today in some works produced by contemporary Nahuas, was the tale of daily
suffering and incessant confrontation. In these compositions new images of the Nahuas
themselves and of the intruders are offered.
The Nahuatl language, spoken since at least the fourth century by some of the inhabitants of the
metropolis of Teotihuacan, has conveyed the Aztec accounts of the Spanish conquest along with
many other testimonies about the pre-Columbian, colonial, and contemporary periods. In the
manner of a testimonial to the “aftermath” following the decades of conquest, I present in this
chapter several particularly eloquent texts originally recorded in Nahuatl during these last two
periods, including two composed only a few years ago. Together they draw vivid images of the
difficult relations that have always existed between the descendants of the Aztecs and their
others”-the colonial Spaniards and contemporary Mexicans.
Nahua Men of Noble Lineage
Write to the King, May 11, 1556
Only thirty-five years after the Spaniards had captured the city of Mexico-Tenochtitlan a
significant number of Nahuas, mainly Aztecs, had not only learned to read and write in their
language and in Spanish, but had also become acquainted with the nature of the newly imposed
procedures for the presentation of claims and the filing of complaints. In particular, many of the
surviving members of the native nobility and their descendants, raised in the’ schools of the
friars, had come to develop these and other pragmatic skills. And while some of them, to
preserve their privileges, collaborated with the new lords, others kept to their people and acted
on their behalf.
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A son of Motecuhzoma named Pedro Tlacahuepantzin and the native governors and judges of the
important towns of Tlacopan (Tacuba), Iztapalapa, and Coyoacan assembled early in May 1556
to write to the king denouncing the many offenses by which they and their peoples were
victimized. Dramatically describing in Nahuatl their situation, they provide a triple image of the
others: of the Spaniards with whom they had to coexist, of the distant king who although
unknown was thought to be good and just to his vassals, and of a Dominican friar, Bartolomew
de las Casas, whom they recognized as a man “of good will and very Christian.” Theirs is a
powerful letter of petition.
To His Majesty [Don Philip, king of Spain], from the lords and principals [leaders] of the
peoples of New Spain, May 11,1556….
Our very High and very Powerful King and Lord:
The lords and principals of the peoples of this New Spain, of Mexico and its surroundings,
subjects and servants of Your Majesty, we kiss the royal feet of Your Majesty and with dutiful
humility and respect we implore You and state that, given that we are in such great need of the
protection and aid of your Majesty, both for ourselves and for those whom we have in our
charge, due to the many wrongs and damages that we receive from the Spaniards, because they
are amongst us, and we amongst them, and because for the remedy of our necessities we are very
much in need of a person who would be our defender, who would reside continuously in that
royal court, to whom we could go with [our necessities], and give Your Majesty notice and true
accounts of all of them, because we cannot, given the long distance there is from here to there,
nor can we manifest them in writing, because they are so many and so great that it would be a
great bother to Your Majesty, thus we ask and humbly beseech Your Majesty to appoint to us the
bishop of Chiapas Don Fray Bartolome de las Casas to take this charge of being our defender
and that Your Majesty order him to accept; and if by chance said bishop were unable because of
his death or sickness, we beseech Your Majesty in such a case to appoint to us one of the
principal persons of your royal court of good will and very Christian to whom we can appeal
with the things that would come up, because so many of them are of such a type that they require
solely your royal presence, and from it only, after God, do we expect the remedy, because
otherwise we will suffer daily so many needs and we are so aggrieved that soon we will be
ended, since every day we are more consumed and finished, because they expel us from our
lands and deprive us of our goods, beyond the many other labors and personal tributes that daily
are increased for us.
May our Lord cause to prosper and keep the royal person and state of Our Majesty as we your
subjects and servants desire. From this town of Tlacopan, where we are all assembled
for this, the eleventh day of the month of May, the year one thousand five hundred fifty-six.
The loyal subjects and servants of your Royal Majesty, Don Esteban de Guzman, judge of
Mexico. Don Hernando Pimentel. Don Antonio Cortes. Don Juan of Coyoacan. Don Pedro de
Moctezuma. Don Alonso of lztapalapa….
Letter of the Council of Huejotzingo to King Philip 11, 1560
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The following document is a relevant section from another letter petitioning the king, this time to
reduce the amount of tribute that had recently been assessed by colonial officials. The authors
were members of the council of Huejotzingo (Huexotzinco), a community southeast of Mexico
City that before the arrival of the Spaniards had fought with the Tlaxcalans against the “Triple
Alliance” (Tenochtitlan, Tezcoco, and Tlacopan [Tacuba]). This was a region that included
important poet-rulers who seemed to oppose the militarism of their more powerful neighbors.2
This sentiment appears to continue in this text, which underlines with extraordinary detail the
ethnic complexity of central Mexico as the Tlaxcalans, former and still ongoing enemies, are
attacked not for being traitors, but for being unfaithful allies of the Spaniards. In Classical
Nahuatl written in the elegant style of the nobility, the authors describe in vivid prose the painful
aftermath following the fall of Tenochtitlan, the variety of responses to Christianity at that time,
and the great esteem in which they and others held the conqueror of the Aztec city.
Our Lord sovereign, you the king don Felipe….
[B]efore anyone told us of or made us acquainted with your fame and your story, . . . and before
we were told or taught the glory and name of our Lord God ,… when your servants the Spaniards
reached us and your captain general don Hernando Cortes arrived …. our Lord God the ruler of
heaven and possessor of earth … enlightened us so that we took you as our king to belong to you
and become your people and your subjects; not a single town surpassed us here in New Spain in
that first and earliest we threw ourselves toward you, we gave ourselves to you, and furthermore
no one intimidated us, no one forced us into it, but truly God caused us to deserve that
voluntarily we adhered to you so that we gladly received the newly arrived Spaniards who
reached us here in New Spain…. We received them very gladly, we embraced them, we saluted
them with many tears, though we were not acquainted with them, and our fathers and
grandfathers also did not know them; but by the mercy of our Lord God we truly came to know
them. Since they are our neighbors, therefore we loved them; nowhere did we attack them. Truly
we fed them and served them; some arrived sick, so that we carried them in our arms and on our
backs, and we served them in many other ways which we are not able to say here. Although the
people who are called and named Tlaxcalans indeed helped, yet we strongly pressed them to give
aid, and we admonished them not to make war; but though we so admonished them, they made
war and fought for fifteen days. But we, when a Spaniard was afflicted, without fail at once we
managed to reach him…. We do not lie in this, for all the conquerors know it well, those who
have died and some now living.
And when they began their conquest and war-making, then also we prepared ourselves well to
aid them, for out came all of our war gear, our arms and provisions and all our equipment, and
we not merely named someone, we went in person, we who rule, and we brought all our nobles
and all of our vassals to aid the Spaniards. We helped not only in warfare, but we also gave them
everything they needed; we fed and clothed them, and we would carry in our arms and on our
backs those whom they wounded in war or who were very ill, and we did all the tasks in
preparing for war. And so that they could fight the Mexica with boats, we worked hard; we gave
them the wood and pitch with which the Spaniards made the boats. And when they conquered
the Mexica and all belonging to them, we never abandoned them or left them behind in it. And
when they went to conquer Michoacan, Jalisco, and Colhuacan, and there at Panuco and there at
Oaxaca and Tchuantepec and Guatemala, [we were] the only ones who went along while they
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conquered and made war here in New Spain until they finished the conquest; we never
abandoned them, in no way did we prejudice their war- making, though some of us were
destroyed in it [there was no one as deserving as we], for we did our duty very well. But as to
those Tlaxcalans, several of their nobles were hanged for making war poorly; in many places
they ran away, and often did badly in the war. In this we do not lie, for the conquerors know it
well.
Our lord sovereign, we also say and declare before you that your fathers the twelve sons of St.
Francis reached us, whom the very high priestly ruler the Holy Father sent and whom you sent,
both taking pity on us so that they came to teach us the gospel, to teach us the holy Catholic faith
and belief, to make us acquainted with the single deity God our Lord, and likewise God favored
us and enlightened us, us of Huejotzingo, who dwell in your city, so that we gladly received
them. When they entered the city of Huejotzingo, of our own free will we honored them and
showed them esteem. When they embraced us so that we would abandon the wicked belief in
many gods, we forthwith voluntarily left it; likewise they did us the good deed [of telling us] to
destroy and burn the stones and wood that we worshiped as gods, and we did it; very willingly
we destroyed, demolished, and burned the temples. Also when they gave us the holy gospel, the
holy Catholic faith, with very good will and desire we received and grasped it; no one frightened
us into it, no one forced us, but very willingly we seized it, and they gave us all the sacraments.
Quietly and peacefully we arranged and ordered it among ourselves; no one, neither nobleman
nor commoner, was ever tortured or burned for this, as was done on every hand here in New
Spain. [The people of] many towns were forced and tortured, were hanged or burned, because
they did not want to leave idolatry, and unwillingly they received the gospel and faith. Especially
those Tlaxcalans pushed out and rejected the fathers, and would not receive the faith, for many of
the high nobles were burned, and some hanged, for combating the advocacy and service of our
Lord God. But we of Huejotzingo, we your poor vassals, we never did anything in your harm,
always we served you in every command you sent or what at your command we were ordered….
Therefore now, in and through God, may you hear these our words, . . . so that you will exercise
on us your rulership to console us and aid us in [this trouble] with which daily we weep and are
sad. We are afflicted and sore pressed, and your town and city of Huejotzingo is as if it is about
to disappear and be destroyed. Here is what is being done to us: now your stewards the royal
officials and the prosecuting attorney Dr. Maldonado are assessing us a very great tribute to
belong to you. The tribute we are to give is 14,800 pesos in money, and also all the bushels of
maize.
Our lord sovereign, never has such happened to us in all the time since your servants and vassals
the Spaniards came to us, for your servant don Hernando Cortes, late captain general, the
Marques del Valle, in all the time he lived here with us, always greatly cherished us and kept us
happy; he never disturbed nor agitated us. Although we gave him tribute, he assigned it to us
only with moderation; even though we gave him gold, it was only very little; no matter how
much, no matter in what way, or if not very pure, he just received it gladly. He never
reprimanded us or afflicted us, because it was evident to him and he understood well how very
greatly we served and aided him. Also he told us many times that he would speak in our favor
before you, that he would help us and inform you of all the ways in which we have aided and
served you…. But perhaps before you he forgot us. How then shall we speak? We did not reach
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you, we were not given audience before you. Who then will speak for us? Unfortunate are we.
Therefore now we place ourselves before you, our sovereign lord….
Your poor vassals who bow down humbly to you from afar,
Don Leonardo Ramirez, governor. Don Mateo de la Corona, alcalde…. Toribio de San
[Cristo]bal Motolinia.
An Eighteenth- Century Nahua Testimony
(Introduced as if it were a text from 1531)
The vanquished communities became involved in innumerable litigations to defend themselves
and their lands. The General Archives of the Nation in Mexico City, along with others
throughout the country, preserve thousands of documents in Nahuatl produced during the
lawsuits, some of which include native drawings and glyphs. In the following example from this
legal genre one can make out the language of bitter protest and resignation of the people of Santo
Tomas Ajusco, a community in the southern part of the Federal District that encompasses
Mexico City. The words, attributed to a native leader said to have founded the town in 15 3 1,
were presented to the Spanish authorities in 1710 by the community’s inhabitants. Through the
invented narrative the descendants of the Aztecs sought to support their rights to the town’s
adjacent lands. The aim was to present the text as a copy of a lost original while contending that
its testimony represented speech uttered almost two hundred years before.
From internal evidence this text can be related to the several manuscripts known as Techialoyan
codices, which made their appearance early in the eighteenth century as copies of or supplements
to the much required but by then lost pre-Hispanic communal and titles. To the extent that this
text is of the same type, the Ajusco testimony has a double significance: as a Nahuatl document
used in litigation and as an eighteenth-century representation of the sorrowful expressions the
Nahuatl ancestors should have pronounced when, s refugees, they established themselves on the
slopes of the Ajusco mountain. The text asserts that in 1531 their chief had taken possession of
their communal lands.
My beloved children, today on the second day of Toxcati one of the 20-days “months”] of 15 3 1,
on the day that belongs o the one … true God, who is in heaven and on the earth and everywhere
in the world; … know that everywhere the lords who are in charge of the people are very sad
because of what … the white men of Castile have done and are still doing ….
It is obvious how they punish the revered lords of the towns, those who were in charge of the
people, who had the rod [symbol of authority]; it is clear how they are put in prison, because the
men of Castile are not satisfied with what they are given, and [they] do not surrender their gold
nor their precious stones.
It is well known how they jeer at our revered women and daughters. They are not quiet, except
solely with gold and precious stones. They make fun of the wives of those who ruled. They are
not quiet but when they burn the others, as they burned alive the greatly revered lord of
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Michoacan, the great Caltzontzin. Thus they behaved with other great lords who were in charge,
who ruled there in Xalapan, TlaxcaIan, Tecuantepec, Oaxyacac, and [other] towns and
chiefdoms where the envious, gold-hungry Christians also entered…. How much blood was shed!
It was our fathers’ blood! And what for? Why was it done? Learn it once and for all: because
they want to impose themselves upon us, because they are utterly gold hungry, voracious of what
belongs to others: our chiefdoms, our revered women and daughters, and our lands.
It is known that the Castilian Cortes, the recently named Marques del Valle, was authorized,
there in Castile, to come to distribute our lands. Thus it is said … that secretly the lord Marques
will come to take our lands, take possession of ourselves and establish new towns. And where
will they throw us? Where will they place us? A very great sadness afflicts us. What will we do,
my sons?
Still my heart recovers. I [i.e., the supposed founder of the city] remember, I will establish a
town here … on the slopes of Axochco mountain, in Xaltipac [On the Sand's Surface]. Because
from down there to here is the place of the men of Axochco. From down there on, this land is
ours, it was left to us by our grandfathers, it was their property since ancient times.
I remember, I will establish a little temple where we will place the new god that the men from
Castile have given us. Truly this new god wants us to worship him. What will we do, my sons?
Let us receive the water on our heads [be baptized], let us give ourselves to the men of Castile,
perhaps in this way they will not kill us.
Let us remain here, Do not trespass [by] going on another’s land, perhaps in this way they will
not kill us. Let us follow them; thus, perhaps we will awaken their compassion. It will be good if
we surrender entirely to them. Oh, that the true god who resides in heaven will help us [coexist]
close to the men of Castile.
And in order that they will not kill us, we will not claim all our lands. We will reduce in length
the extension of our lands, and that which remains, our fathers will defend.
Now I declare that, in order for them not to kill us…. we accept to have water poured on our
heads, that we worship the new god, as I declare he is the same as the one we had.
Now I reduce in length our lands. Thus it will be. Their limits will begin in the direction from
which the sun rises and continue … [he mentions each of the limits].
I presume that for this small piece of land they will not kill us. It does not matter that it was
much larger. This is my decision because I do not want my sons to be killed. Therefore, we will
work only this little piece Of land, and thus our sons will do so. Let us hope in this manner they
will not kill us …
Dance of the Great Conquest, Eighteenth Century
In many different forms Nahuatl-speaking people continued over the centuries to express their
feelings about what had befallen them. Among the extant testimonies that recall the Spanish
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invasion, there are several compositions conceived to be performed accompanied by music,
song, and dance. They are productions belonging to a genre of native plays that were developed
throughout the colonial period. Among the numerous “dances” or ballet-dramas whose theme is
the “Conquest,” there is one written in elegant Nahuatl that deserves special consideration,
among other reasons because it was still being performed as late as 1894 in the town of
Xicotepec (today Villa Juarez) in the state of Puebla.
As is common in Greek drama, the plot of the “Dance of the Great Conquest” develops in a
single day. The story concerns the arrival of Hernan Cortes, his encounter with Motecuhzoma,
and some important events said to have immediately followed the meeting. The text conveys a
type of Christian lesson centered on the benefits believed to have come from Cortes’s advent as
the bearer of the true faith. From this one can infer the intervention of a friar’s hand; yet at the
same time it includes a dialogue between Motecuhzoma and prince Cuauhtemoc that no one but
a Nahua could have introduced. This dialogue transforms the play, perhaps created originally as
a piece of “missionary theater,” into a courageous condemnation both of the Spanish intrusion
and of Motecuhzoma’s attitude toward Cortes, which we discussed earlier in chapter 4. This
attack, uttered by Cuauhtemoc, is accompanied by a contemptuous depiction of the conqueror
and his men.
The fact that this play, whose language is indicative of an eighteenth-century composition, was
performed as recently as 1894 demonstrates the enduring force of the collective memory of the
Nahuas, which could keep alive sentiments associated with an event that, although it had
radically affected their culture and being, occurred in a distant past. Numerous anachronisms and
fanciful interpretations of historical facts are understandably present throughout the play. For
example, Cuauhtemoc refers to Motecuhzoma as “the great ruler who governs this new land
called America.” And due most likely to the friar’s intervention, following Cuauhtemoc’s
reprimand of Motecuhzoma the play ends with an imaginary mortal combat in which
Cuauhtemoc loses his life. This fight, which supposedly took place on the same day, deviates
widely from the accepted historical facts, which identify the Aztec leader’s death as taking place
when he was hanged by Cortes in Tabasco in 1525. In the spirit of a sermon, a choir sings:
“There died poor Cuauhtemoc. He went to Hell. Because of his blindness, his perdition took
place.”
This admonition, made to be enunciated in an edifying manner, contrasts with the young prince’s
courageous rebuke against Motecuhzoma. The words, notwithstanding a few anachronisms, ring
true to our understanding of the character of the last Aztec ” emperor. “
Emperor Motecuhzoma, great Lord, Monarch, as you are named here in the land called America.
Improperly are you so named, for you no longer ought to wear the crown, for you have lost
courage and you are afraid…. Tell me if you dare to speak to this great city? Can you give
[something] to those who are down and out in the country from which they came?
They come to mock you. All those who come here are second rate or Spaniards who lost out,
who come telling you that in their country there are great cities, talking of another king at the
head of the empire of Castile by the name of Charles the Fifth, [and] of a Catholic religion.
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These are only stories, lies. I do not believe in other books [i.e., except indigenous, picto-glyphic
codices]. I feel that their words are only like dreams. You have no courage, but I have, and I will
make war and test the strength they claim to have. I shall see it, and many fearful arts will be
practiced. There are flints, arrows, new stones. Flints that they will take, those who go out to
war, fearful warriors, also Chichimeci, like wild beasts who maintain their anger. They are
making straight [truthful] my gods, they all give me great knowledge, science. I shall lead them.
I shall encourage them, all who come together, and they [the] armies will show every form of
war.
You will likewise lose your kingdom, your crown, and your scepter. You will lose all the esteem
that I maintained for you because you gave yourself up. your … kingdom, and you shall suffer
those lost ones here present, the bandits, Spaniards who have come over here. They come to fool
you, for you no longer deserve your dominion.
I deserve it. It belongs to me because I am strong of heart, valiant. I do not want the honor of our
gods to come to nothing. You shall see, you shall experience who is the one who calls himself,
who is named prince Cuauhtemoc. I have in my hands flames, noise, lightning, embers, smoke,
sand, dust, winds, whirlwinds with which I shall drive them back. If they do not want to die, let
them go right back to their country. If they do not, they shall perish here no matter what you do
to prevent it.
The Manifestos of Emiliano Zapata, April 1918
Nahuatl-speaking Indians and other natives, among them the Yaqui of Sonora and the Maya of
Yucatan, took part in the Mexican Revolution of 1910-19. Emiliano Zapata, a well-known leader
of the Revolution and champion of the landless peasants of southern Mexico, was not himself an
Indian, but he was a mestizo, born in Anencuilco, a small town in Morelos, who, endowed with a
charismatic personality, had managed to attract large numbers of Nahuas and others to join the
army he had raised. However, the mere idea of an Indian uprising caused such alarm among the
elite that a prominent conservative congressman, Jose Maria Lozano, warned his fellow partisans
of Zapata’s successes and threat in these terms: “Zapata has rebelled…. He poses as the liberator
of the slave; he offers something to all. He is not alone…. Countless people follow him…. He
offers them lands. His preaching begins to bear fruit: the Indians have rebelled!”
Several testimonies exist that describe the pleasure felt by the Nahuas on hearing Zapata
addressing them in their own language. One is provided by a native woman, Luz Jimdnez, in an
account she gave of Zapata’s arrival in the village of Milpa Alta, just south of Mexico City: “First
news we had about the revolution was the arrival of a great man, Zapata, who came from the
state of Morelos. He was well dressed with his tall, crowned, broad-brimmed felt sombrero. He
was the first great man who spoke to us in Nahuatl…. All those who came along with him spoke
Nahuatl very much the same as we do. Zapata spoke Nahuatl! When he and his men entered
Milpa Alta we could understand what they said.”
Emiliano Zapata, who became a legendary hero to thousands of mestizo peasants and Indians,
was fighting to get back for them the communal lands that had been usurped by Spaniards,
Mexicans, and others of European provenance over the course of centuries. To the eyes of his
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followers, Zapata’s struggle was a fight to regain lost personal freedom and ancestral lands, a
battle to assure that land would be owned only by those who worked it.
After several years of fighting, and already suffering from a decimated army, Zapata tried to
regain his forces by issuing two manifestos in Nahuatl on April 27, 1918. In one he urged some
Tlaxcalan armed bands, who had previously followed Domingo Arenas, his former ally and later
his murdered rival, to come to his side. In the other he repeated the call to the people living in the
nearby villages. These manifestos are the last extant examples of public documents in Nahuatl in
which, once again, the images of the vanquished and of those who abuse power are vividly
depicted. The first manifesto reads as follows:
To you, chiefs, officers, and soldiers of the Arenas Division.
What we all suspected has already occurred. That which had to happen today or tomorrow: your
separation from those engendered by Venustiano Carranza [president and head of the federal
army]. They never favored, nor loved you. They merely deceived you, envied you. They wanted
to hurt you, dishonor you, get rid of you. They never behaved as humans toward you.
To turn the face against those who so badly abuse power, honors you, erases the memory of your
past deception [when their chief Arenas sided with the federal government].
We hope you will take part in the ideals for which we are fighting. In this manner we will be one,
pressed closely against one flag. Thus our unified hearts will excel. Those who make fun of us,
the ones engendered by Carranza, will not be able to destroy us….
join us, our flag belongs to the people. We will fight together…. [T]his is our great work which
we will achieve in some way, before our revered mother, [the one] called Patria [i.e., homeland
or ancestral land].
Let us fight the perverse, wicked Carranza, who is a tormentor of us all. If we work for our unity,
we will fulfill the great command: land, liberty, justice. Let us perform our work of
revolutionaries and know our duties toward our revered mother the [ancestral] land. This army’s
command invites you. That is why I express this word. All those who will follow it, who will
fight at our side, will enjoy a righteous and good life. In it we place our word of honor, of sincere
men and good revolutionaries.
Tlaltizapan, Morelos, April 27, 1918
The Commander-in-Chief of the Liberation Army, Emiliano Zapata
The other manifesto, dated the same day, was addressed to the people in general who lived in the
region “where chief Arenas had fought.” Here Zapata expresses himself echoing the centuriesold
complaints and hopes of the Nahuas:
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Our great war will not come to an end, will not conclude until that obscure tyrant, envious, who
mocks the people, makes their faces turn around, is defeated. He is Venustiano Carranza who
dishonors and makes ashamed our revered mother the [ancestral] land, Mexico….
Here is the people who keep strong and confront the great possessors of lands -Christians [i.e.,
hacienda owners and caiques], those who have made fun of us, who hate us…. We will receive
the valiant ones, our hearts will rejoice being together with them. .
Let us keep fighting. We will not rest until we come to possess our lands, those that belonged to
our grandfathers, and which the greedy-handed thieves took from us….
It is now more than ever necessary that we all, with our heart and courage, achieve this great
work, following those who began the uprising, who preserve in their souls the true aims and have
faith in a pure life.
The Commander-in-Chief of the Liberation Army, Emiliano Zapata.
The Nahuas and the “Coyotes” Today
The Nahuas, their invincible spirit, and their language are still very much alive today – Contrary
to what some had expected or even desired, indigenous endurance, after hundreds of years of
adversity, has made possible the survival of a people with a long cultural history. Today, in the
last decade of our millennium, there are more than forty million native people in the Americas,
one and a half million of whom are Nahuas engaged in the centuries-long struggle to preserve
and foster their ancestral cultural identities. The intellectual effort of a growing number of them
is currently contributing to a renaissance that includes the production of a new literature, aptly
named by them Yancuic Tlabtolli, the “New Word.”
Among the contemporary Nahua writers we find professionals teaching in rural communities,
journalists, and university students. Some are already well acquainted with Nahuatl grammar and
the ancient literature inscribed in the language. To them the compositions of pre- Columbian
poets, such as the famous Nezahualcoyotl (1402-1472), the extant literary narratives, and the
detailed chronicles -including those concerning the Spanish invasion found in this book -are a
source of inspiration. It has been a great honor and pleasure for me that some of these masters of
the “new word” have attended the seminar on Nahuatl culture and language which I have
conducted for more than thirty years at the National University Of Mexico.
One of these native authors, Joel Martinez Hernandez, born in the Huaxteca in the state of
Hidalgo and himself a teacher, has penned in Nahuatl a literary declaration expressing his
thoughts regarding the present and future of the Nahuas. In it he paints a painful image of those
he and many Nahuas call “Coyotes,” referring to the astute and voracious non-Indians who take
advantage of the few possessions left to the indigenous peoples.
Some Coyotes are saying
that we Nahuas will disappear,
will vanish,
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our language will be heard no more,
will be used no more.
The Coyotes rejoice in this,
as this is what they are looking for.
Why is it that they want us to disappear?
we do not have to contemplate this too long,
because four hundred years have shown us
the aim of the Coyotes.
They are envious of our lands,
our forests and rivers,
our work, our sweat.
The Coyotes want us living
in the slums of their cities,
naked and hungry,
subject to their falsehoods and frauds.
The Coyotes want us to work for them,
they want us to abandon
our communal lands, our labor,
our endeavors and language,
our ways of dressing and living,
our forms of thinking.
The Coyotes desire to make Coyotes out of us,
and then they will deprive us
of all that is ours,
the fruits of our labor
which has caused us fatigue.
We must strengthen our hearts with one,
two words, which will illuminate our eyes,
so we can become fully conscious of it.
We have many tasks to perform.
I will add only a few words.
Where and how many
are the Nahuas in Mexico?
We, the Nahuas,
are not just in one place,
we are scattered in sixteen states
and eight hundred and eight municipalities.
One has to understand
that it is not only in our farm[s],
not only in our village[s],
that we Nahuas exist.
Sometimes we hear
that we Nahuas are vanishing,
but the census figures
speak very differently
…. Truly we can assert that,
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although some want us to disappear,
we Nahuas continue to live,
we Nahuas continue to grow ….
The Nahuas, formerly vanquished and for centuries oppressed, are indeed growing in numbers
and, above all, have become fully conscious of the right they have to preserve their language and
culture. With this assurance, today they are busily reflecting upon their culture and its destiny.
The “others,” imagined and described in many forms by them since the days of the invasion,
must come to grips with and understand this new perspective. As is daily becoming more
evident, the Nahuas and the millions of other Native Americans throughout the hemisphere are
no longer asking for mercy. Like other Americans, north and south of the equator, they know
they have their rights as individuals, communities, and ethnic groups. But now another issue has
come to the fore: How does one learn to trust in oneself? Some indigenous writers claim that for
this to take place a new self- image must be created. One Nahua poet, Natalio Hernindez
Xocoyotzin, a native of Ixhuatan, Veracruz, has conveyed this insight beautifully.
Sometimes I feel
that we, the Indians, are waiting
for the arrival of a Man
who can achieve all,
knows everything,
is ready to help us,
will answer our problems.
But, this Man who
can achieve all,
knows everything,
will never arrive
because he is in ourselves,
walks along with us.
He has been asleep,
but now he is awakening.”
The broken spears, the net made of holes, was it all merely a dream? Ancient poetry was like
“the flowers that wither,” as a fifteenth- century Nahua poet expressed it. But now it is different
The “person- within” is already awakening, giving strength to the heart of the Nahuas. The words
of that inner American being are different from those heard daily in our busy lives, but by
listening carefully one can perceive in them the wisdom of the Nahua elders.
They shall not wither, my flowers,
they shall not cease, my songs,
I, the singer, lift them up.
They are scattered, they spread about.
But even though my flowers may yellow,
they shall live
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95
in the innermost house
of the bird of the golden feathers.
Appendix
The chronicles and other accounts written by the men who discovered and conquered the New
World were a startling revelation to the Europe of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The
Old World, with its long history, was suddenly eager to learn more about the “barbarous
peoples” who had recently been discovered, and the reports brought or sent back by the
“chroniclers of the Indies” were received with the liveliest interest. At times these new facts were
questioned or disputed, but they never failed to elicit reflection and interpretation. The
conquistadors themselves attempted to describe clearly, in European terms, the different physical
and human realities existing in the New World; so also did the missionary friars and the
European philosophers and humanists, as well as the royal historians.
The results were varied. Some were “projections” of old ideas: for instance, Fray Diego de Duran
argued that the Nahuas were actually the descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel. Others were
apologies- more or less intentional-for the Conquest, such as the letter-reports of Cortes. The
Indians appear in some chronicles as idolatrous savages given over to cannibalism and sodomy,
while in others they are described as models of natural virtue.
On the basis of these reports and chronicles, a number of histories were written in Europe from
the humanistic point of view of that epoch. One outstanding example is De Orbe Novo by the
celebrated Pedro Martir de Angleria, who often expresses his amazement on discovering the arts
and folkways of the Indians; another is the wealth of firsthand material which the royal
chronicler, Antonio de Herrera, incorporated in his Historia general de los hechos de los
castellanos en las Islas y Tierra Firme de el Mar Oceano. European historiography-not only in
Spain and Portugal, but also in France, England, Germany and Italy-gained new life when it
turned its attention to the reports coming back from the New World.
We rarely consider, however, that if Europe showed so great an interest in this astonishing new
continent, the Indians must have shown an equal interest in the Spaniards, who to them were
strange beings from a totally unknown world. It is attractive to study the different ways in which
the Europeans conceived of the Indians, but the inverse problem, which takes us to the heart of
indigenous thought, is perhaps even more instructive. What did the Indians think when they saw
the strangers arrive on their shores and in their cities? What were their first attitudes toward the
invaders? In what spirit did they fight them? And how did they interpret their own downfall?
There arc no complete and final answers to these questions; but there are some partial answers,
provided by the native cultures that had then attained the highest development-the Mayas of
Yucatan and the Nahuas of the Valley of Mexico. The Spanish accounts of the Conquest are only
one version of it; the Indians who were its victims recorded another, in words and pictures.
Inevitably there arc major disagreements between the two versions. But in spite of all the mutual
accusations and misunderstandings, or perhaps because of them, both accounts are intensely
human. They should be studied without prejudice, for only a calm examination, free of bias and
THE AZTEC ACCOUNT OF THE SPANISH CONQUEST OF MEXICO
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96
preconceptions, can help to explain the Mexican people of today, who are the living consequence
of that violent clash between two worlds.
Within Middle America, the Nahuatl and Mayan cultures left us the most ample indigenous
descriptions of the Conquest. Both cultures possessed a mode of writing, an oral tradition and a
sense of history. A brief consideration of their efforts to record the past will illustrate their
earnest desire to depict their own version of this most shattering event.
Interest in History in the Indigenous World
The Mayan stelae, the other commemorative monuments of the Mayas and Nahuas, and the
historical codices or xiuhamatl (books of years) of the Nahuas all testify to the care with which
both cultures chronicled the important events in their past. These records were complemented by
oral texts, which were faithfully passed down by memory in the pre-Hispanic centers of
education. Students were taught, among other things, the history of what had happened year by
year, an amplified version of what was contained in the codices.
A single contemporary report will make clear the Indians’ concern to preserve their history. It is
taken from the Historia general by Don Antonio de Herrera, royal chronicler of Philip 11. Don
Antonio never pretended to glorify the Indians, but he gathered together, better than anyone else,
a great mass of reports and information concerning them. In section four, book ten, he observes:
The nations of New Spain preserved the memory of their antiquities. In Yucatan and Honduras
there were certain books in which the Indians recorded the events of their times, together with
their knowledge of plants, animals and other natural things.
In the Province of Mexico, they had libraries of histories and calendars, which they painted in
pictures. Whatever had a concrete form was painted in its own image, while if it lacked a form,
they represented it by other characters. Thus they set down what they wished.
And to remember the times in which each event came to pass, they had certain wheels, each of
which represented a century of a hundred and two years. Also, depending on the year in which
memorable events took place, they painted their pictures and characters, such as a man wearing a
helmet and a red mantle, under the sign of the canestalk, to show the year in which the Castilians
entered their land, and so with the other events.
And because their characters were not sufficient, like our own writing, they could not set things
down exactly, only the substance of their ideas; but they learned in chorus many speeches,
orations and songs. They took great care to see that the youths learned them by memory, and for
this they had schools in which the old taught them to the young. By this means, the texts were
preserved in their entirety.
And when the Castilians entered that land and taught the Indians the art of writing, the natives
wrote out their speeches and songs as they had known them since antiquity. They also recorded
their discourses in their own characters and figures, and in this manner they set down the
Paternoster, the Ave Maria and all of the Christian doctrine.
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In all these ways, Nahuas and Mayas recorded the most impressive and tragic event in their
history-the fall of their civilization at the hands of strangers, ending with the destruction of their
ancient ways of life. The present book, a kind of anthology of texts and pictures, offers some
examples of the different impressions preserved by the Nahuatl-speaking Indians regarding
Cortes and the Spaniards, the events of the Conquest and the final ruin of the Aztec capital and
its culture.
A similar book could be prepared on the Mayas, who also left indigenous accounts of the
Conquest, including those in the Anales de los Xahil, the Titulos de la Casa Ixquin-Nehaip and
the Cronica de Cbac-Xulub-Cben, and at least fragments in certain books of the Chilam Balam.
But this task remains for those who dedicate themselves to the study of Mayan civilization.
We must turn next to a brief discussion of the various sources from which these Nahuatl records
of the Conquest have been selected.
Indian Texts and Paintings Describing the Conquest
Fray Toribio de Benavente, known as Motolinia, arrived in Tenochtitlan in June 1524, one of a
celebrated group of twelve Franciscan friars. He was the first to discover the Indians’
determination to preserve their own memories of the Conquest. In the beginning of the third part
of his Historia de los indios de la Nueva Espana, he reported:
Among the events of their times, the native Indians took particular note of the year in which the
Spaniards entered this and, for to them it was a most remarkable happening which at he first
caused them great terror and amazement. they saw a strange people arrive from the sea-a feat
they had never before witnessed nor had known was possible-all dressed in strange garments and
so bold and warlike that, although few in number, they could invade all the provinces of this land
imperiously, as if the natives were their vassals. The Indians were also filled with wonder at their
horses, and the Spaniards riding on their backs…. They called the Spaniards “teteuh,” meaning
“gods,” which the Spaniards corrupted into “teules.”. . .
The Indians also set down the year in which the twelve friars arrived together. .
There are twelve surviving documents, written or painted, in which the Indians described the
coming of the Spaniards and the great conflict that ensued. They are not of equal importance and
antiquity, but they reveal the characteristic impressions that the Nahuas formed of the Conquest.
The most valuable of these documents are:
(1) Songs of the Conquest. The oldest native accounts of the Conquest are in the
form of songs, composed in the traditional manner by some of the few surviving
cuicapicque, or Nahuatl poets. True icnocuicatl (songs of sorrow) are the stanzas
describing the final days of Tenochtitlan (in Chapter 14) and the grief of the
Mexican people over their defeat (in Chapter 15). As Dr. Angel Maria Garibay
has pointed out in his Historia de la literatura nabuati, the first of these poems
must have been composed in about 1524, the second a year earlier.
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98
(2) Unos anales historicos de la nacion mexicana. This title has been given to the
important “Manuscript 22″ in the National Library in Paris. The manuscript dates
from 1528, only seven years after the fall of the Aztec capital, and was written in
Nahuatl by a group of anonymous natives of Tlatelolco. The most remarkable
thing about this document is the fact that its Indian authors somehow how learned
the correct use of the Latin alphabet (the Colegio de Santa Cruz had not yet been
founded) in order to write out some of their memories of past events-above all,
their own account of the Conquest.
The work is valuable to us as historical evidence, but its literary and human value
is perhaps even greater. It presents for the first time, and in detail, a picture of the
destruction of Nahuatl culture, as witnessed by a few of its survivors. The relevant
passages from the manuscript, which has been translated from Nahuatl into
Spanish by Dr. Garibay, are given in Chapter 14 of this book.
(3) Codex Florentino. The description of the Conquest preserved in this codex
was recorded later than that in “Manuscript 22,” but it is much more ample. It was
written in Nahuatl, under the eye of Fray Bernadino de Sahagun, by his Indian
students from Tlatelolco and elsewhere, using the reminiscences of aged natives
who had actually seen the Conquest. The first version of the text”in the Indian
language, and in the crude manner in which they spoke it”-seems to have been
completed in about 1555; unfortunately it has been lost. Fray Bernadino later
made a resume of it in Spanish. Still later, in about 1585, he prepared a second
version in Nahuatl to correct the first, which, he said, contained “certain things
that were not true, and was silent about certain others where it should have
spoken….”
As Dr. Garibay has remarked, it is impossible to say whether the text has gained
or lost from these emendations. It is, however, the most complete indigenous
account of the Conquest now known -from the sighting of various omens “when
the Spaniards had not yet come to this land” to a transcript of one of the speeches
“in which Don Hernando Cortes admonished all the lords of Mexico, Tezcoco and
Tlacopan” to deliver their gold and other treasures. We have drawn a – number of
selections from this invaluable source.
(4) The Major pictographic records. The texts by Sahagun’s informants and other
native historians are supplemented by various records in which events of the
Conquest are set down as paintings, the traditional Indian manner of writing
history. The three principal works of this nature are the paintings corresponding to
the Nahuatl texts by Sahagun’s informants, preserved in the Codex Florentino; the
Lienzo de Tlaxcala (dating from the middle of the sixteenth century), a collection
of eighty paintings describing the actions of the Tlaxcaltccas, a subject tribe who
allied themselves with the Spaniards; and the improperly named Manuscrito de
1576 (it mentions several later dates), also known as the Codex Aubin, with both
texts and related paintings. There are also some pictures, clearly indigenous in
nature, in the manuscript called the Codex Ramirez. This codex was probably
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99
compiled from the data assembled before 1580 by Fray Diego de Duran, who is
known to have had access to many other native accounts which have since been
lost.
(5) Briefer indigenous accounts. We have also drawn several passages from
briefer works in Nahuatl. The Codex Aubin is especially valuable; one of the
descriptions of the massacre at the chief temple (in Chapter 9) was taken from it.
Other important material was set down by Fernando Alvarado Tezozomoc in his
two chronicles, “mexicana” and “mexicayotl,” and by the celebrated historian of
Chalco, Domingo Francisco de San Anton Munon Chimalpain Cuauhtlehuanitzin.
From Chimalpain’s VH relacion we have used a selection (in Chapter 13)
describing the demands made by Cortes after the fall of the capital. Finally, there
are the Codex Ramirez, which includes important data from the informants of
Tlatelolco, and the brief sections about the Conquest in the Anales Tepanecas de
Azcapotzalco and the Anales de Mexico y Tlatelolco, both of which are written in
Nahuatl.
(6) Accounts by the native allies of Cortes. Any presentation of indigenous texts
describing the Conquest must contain at least a few of the accounts written by
certain historians, Indian and mestizo, descended from those natives who joined
with Cortes to defeat the Aztecs. The versions they present of certain events,
while differing from the other indigenous narratives, do not fall outside the
general scope of this book. It is true that the Tlaxcaltecas and Tezcocanos fought
at the side of the conquistadors, but the effects of the Conquest were as unhappy
for them as for the other Nahuas: all were placed under the yoke of Spain, and all
lost their ancient culture forever.
Along with the Lienzo de Tlaxcala (mentioned previously), we have made use of the Historia de
Tlaxcala by Diego Munoz Camargo, a mestizo who wrote in Spanish during the second half of
the sixteenth century. His obviously slanted version of the massacre at Cholula (in Chapter 5) is
particularly interesting, We have also used the descriptions of the Conquest which Don Feranado
de Alva Ixtlilxochitl, a descendant of the ruling house of Tezcoco,S wrote down from the point
of view of the Tezcocanos. His XIII relacion and Historia chichimeca, both written in Spanish,
contain data which he gathered from old Nahuatl sources no longer extant, but which he
interpreted in a manner very different from that of the writers of Tenochtitlan and Tlatelolco.

The Hitch Hikers Guide to Galaxy

Douglas Adams. The Hitch Hikers Guide to Galaxy

Fantazy. 1990.

Based on the famous Radio series

Douglas N. Adams was born in Cambridge in 1952. He was
educated at Brentwood School, Essex and St. John’s College,
Cambridge where he read English. After graduation he spent several
years contributing material to radio and television shows
as well as writing, performing and sometimes directing stage
revues in London, Cambridge and on the Edinburgh Fringe. He has
also worked at various times as a hospital porter, barn
builder, chicken shed cleaner, bodyguard, radio producer and
script editor of Doctor Who.

He is not married, has no children, and does not live in Surrey.

for Jonny Brock and Clare Gorst
and all other Arlingtonians
for tea, sympathy, and a sofa

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the
western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.
Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an
utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose apedescended life
forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are
a pretty neat idea.
This planet has – or rather had – a problem, which was this: most of
the people on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions
were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned
with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on
the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.
And so the problem remained; lots of the people were mean, and most
of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches.
Many were increasingly of the opinion that they’d all made a big
mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said
that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have
left the oceans.
And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had
been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to
people for a change, one girl sitting on her own in a small cafe in
Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all
this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and
happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have
to get nailed to anything.
Sadly, however, before she could get to a phone to tell anyone about
it, a terribly stupid catastrophe occurred, and the idea was lost forever.
This is not her story.
But it is the story of that terrible stupid catastrophe and some of
its consequences.
It is also the story of a book, a book called The Hitch Hiker’s Guide
to the Galaxy – not an Earth book, never published on Earth, and until the
terrible catastrophe occurred, never seen or heard of by any Earthman.
Nevertheless, a wholly remarkable book.
in fact it was probably the most remarkable book ever to come out of
the great publishing houses of Ursa Minor – of which no Earthman had ever
heard either.
Not only is it a wholly remarkable book, it is also a highly
successful one – more popular than the Celestial Home Care Omnibus, better
selling than Fifty More Things to do in Zero Gravity, and more
controversial than Oolon Colluphid’s trilogy of philosophical blockbusters
Where God Went Wrong, Some More of God’s Greatest Mistakes and Who is this
God Person Anyway?
In many of the more relaxed civilizations on the Outer Eastern Rim of
the Galaxy, the Hitch Hiker’s Guide has already supplanted the great
Encyclopedia Galactica as the standard repository of all knowledge and
wisdom, for though it has many omissions and contains much that is
apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over the older, more
pedestrian work in two important respects.
First, it is slightly cheaper; and secondly it has the words Don’t
Panic inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover.
But the story of this terrible, stupid Thursday, the story of its
extraordinary consequences, and the story of how these consequences are
inextricably intertwined with this remarkable book begins very simply.
It begins with a house.

1

The house stood on a slight rise just on the edge of the village. It
stood on its own and looked over a broad spread of West Country farmland.
Not a remarkable house by any means – it was about thirty years old,
squattish, squarish, made of brick, and had four windows set in the front
of a size and proportion which more or less exactly failed to please the
eye.
The only person for whom the house was in any way special was Arthur
Dent, and that was only because it happened to be the one he lived in. He
had lived in it for about three years, ever since he had moved out of
London because it made him nervous and irritable. He was about thirty as
well, dark haired and never quite at ease with himself. The thing that
used to worry him most was the fact that people always used to ask him
what he was looking so worried about. He worked in local radio which he
always used to tell his friends was a lot more interesting than they
probably thought. It was, too – most of his friends worked in advertising.
It hadn’t properly registered with Arthur that the council wanted to
knock down his house and build an bypass instead.
At eight o’clock on Thursday morning Arthur didn’t feel very good. He
woke up blearily, got up, wandered blearily round his room, opened a
window, saw a bulldozer, found his slippers, and stomped off to the
bathroom to wash.
Toothpaste on the brush – so. Scrub.
Shaving mirror – pointing at the ceiling. He adjusted it. For a
moment it reflected a second bulldozer through the bathroom window.
Properly adjusted, it reflected Arthur Dent’s bristles. He shaved them
off, washed, dried, and stomped off to the kitchen to find something
pleasant to put in his mouth.
Kettle, plug, fridge, milk, coffee. Yawn.
The word bulldozer wandered through his mind for a moment in search
of something to connect with.
The bulldozer outside the kitchen window was quite a big one.
He stared at it.
“Yellow,” he thought and stomped off back to his bedroom to get
dressed.
Passing the bathroom he stopped to drink a large glass of water, and
another. He began to suspect that he was hung over. Why was he hung over?
Had he been drinking the night before? He supposed that he must have been.
He caught a glint in the shaving mirror. “Yellow,” he thought and stomped
on to the bedroom.
He stood and thought. The pub, he thought. Oh dear, the pub. He
vaguely remembered being angry, angry about something that seemed
important. He’d been telling people about it, telling people about it at
great length, he rather suspected: his clearest visual recollection was of
glazed looks on other people’s faces. Something about a new bypass he had
just found out about. It had been in the pipeline for months only no one
seemed to have known about it. Ridiculous. He took a swig of water. It
would sort itself out, he’d decided, no one wanted a bypass, the council
didn’t have a leg to stand on. It would sort itself out.
God what a terrible hangover it had earned him though. He looked at
himself in the wardrobe mirror. He stuck out his tongue. “Yellow,” he
thought. The word yellow wandered through his mind in search of something
to connect with.
Fifteen seconds later he was out of the house and lying in front of a
big yellow bulldozer that was advancing up his garden path.
Mr L Prosser was, as they say, only human. In other words he was a
carbon-based life form descended from an ape. More specifically he was
forty, fat and shabby and worked for the local council. Curiously enough,
though he didn’t know it, he was also a direct male-line descendant of
Genghis Khan, though intervening generations and racial mixing had so
juggled his genes that he had no discernible Mongoloid characteristics,
and the only vestiges left in Mr L Prosser of his mighty ancestry were a
pronounced stoutness about the tum and a predilection for little fur hats.
He was by no means a great warrior: in fact he was a nervous worried
man. Today he was particularly nervous and worried because something had
gone seriously wrong with his job – which was to see that Arthur Dent’s
house got cleared out of the way before the day was out.
“Come off it, Mr Dent,”, he said, “you can’t win you know. You can’t
lie in front of the bulldozer indefinitely.” He tried to make his eyes
blaze fiercely but they just wouldn’t do it.
Arthur lay in the mud and squelched at him.
“I’m game,” he said, “we’ll see who rusts first.”
“I’m afraid you’re going to have to accept it,” said Mr Prosser
gripping his fur hat and rolling it round the top of his head, “this
bypass has got to be built and it’s going to be built!”
“First I’ve heard of it,” said Arthur, “why’s it going to be built?”
Mr Prosser shook his finger at him for a bit, then stopped and put it
away again.
“What do you mean, why’s it got to be built?” he said. “It’s a
bypass. You’ve got to build bypasses.”
Bypasses are devices which allow some people to drive from point A to
point B very fast whilst other people dash from point B to point A very
fast. People living at point C, being a point directly in between, are
often given to wonder what’s so great about point A that so many people of
point B are so keen to get there, and what’s so great about point B that
so many people of point A are so keen to get there. They often wish that
people would just once and for all work out where the hell they wanted to
be.
Mr Prosser wanted to be at point D. Point D wasn’t anywhere in
particular, it was just any convenient point a very long way from points
A, B and C. He would have a nice little cottage at point D, with axes over
the door, and spend a pleasant amount of time at point E, which would be
the nearest pub to point D. His wife of course wanted climbing roses, but
he wanted axes. He didn’t know why – he just liked axes. He flushed hotly
under the derisive grins of the bulldozer drivers.
He shifted his weight from foot to foot, but it was equally
uncomfortable on each. Obviously somebody had been appallingly incompetent
and he hoped to God it wasn’t him.
Mr Prosser said: “You were quite entitled to make any suggestions or
protests at the appropriate time you know.”
“Appropriate time?” hooted Arthur. “Appropriate time? The first I
knew about it was when a workman arrived at my home yesterday. I asked him
if he’d come to clean the windows and he said no he’d come to demolish the
house. He didn’t tell me straight away of course. Oh no. First he wiped a
couple of windows and charged me a fiver. Then he told me.”
“But Mr Dent, the plans have been available in the local planning
office for the last nine month.”
“Oh yes, well as soon as I heard I went straight round to see them,
yesterday afternoon. You hadn’t exactly gone out of your way to call
attention to them had you? I mean like actually telling anybody or
anything.”
“But the plans were on display…”
“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”
“That’s the display department.”
“With a torch.”
“Ah, well the lights had probably gone.”
“So had the stairs.”
“But look, you found the notice didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a
locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door
saying Beware of the Leopard.”
A cloud passed overhead. It cast a shadow over Arthur Dent as he lay
propped up on his elbow in the cold mud. It cast a shadow over Arthur
Dent’s house. Mr Prosser frowned at it.
“It’s not as if it’s a particularly nice house,” he said.
“I’m sorry, but I happen to like it.”
“You’ll like the bypass.”
“Oh shut up,” said Arthur Dent. “Shut up and go away, and take your
bloody bypass with you. You haven’t got a leg to stand on and you know
it.”
Mr Prosser’s mouth opened and closed a couple of times while his mind
was for a moment filled with inexplicable but terribly attractive visions
of Arthur Dent’s house being consumed with fire and Arthur himself running
screaming from the blazing ruin with at least three hefty spears
protruding from his back. Mr Prosser was often bothered with visions like
these and they made him feel very nervous. He stuttered for a moment and
then pulled himself together.
“Mr Dent,” he said.
“Hello? Yes?” said Arthur.
“Some factual information for you. Have you any idea how much damage
that bulldozer would suffer if I just let it roll straight over you?”
“How much?” said Arthur.
“None at all,” said Mr Prosser, and stormed nervously off wondering
why his brain was filled with a thousand hairy horsemen all shouting at
him.
By a curious coincidence, None at all is exactly how much suspicion
the ape-descendant Arthur Dent had that one of his closest friends was not
descended from an ape, but was in fact from a small planet in the vicinity
of Betelgeuse and not from Guildford as he usually claimed.
Arthur Dent had never, ever suspected this.
This friend of his had first arrived on the planet some fifteen Earth
years previously, and he had worked hard to blend himself into Earth
society – with, it must be said, some success. For instance he had spent
those fifteen years pretending to be an out of work actor, which was
plausible enough.
He had made one careless blunder though, because he had skimped a bit
on his preparatory research. The information he had gathered had led him
to choose the name “Ford Prefect” as being nicely inconspicuous.
He was not conspicuously tall, his features were striking but not
conspicuously handsome. His hair was wiry and gingerish and brushed
backwards from the temples. His skin seemed to be pulled backwards from
the nose. There was something very slightly odd about him, but it was
difficult to say what it was. Perhaps it was that his eyes didn’t blink
often enough and when you talked to him for any length of time your eyes
began involuntarily to water on his behalf. Perhaps it was that he smiled
slightly too broadly and gave people the unnerving impression that he was
about to go for their neck.
He struck most of the friends he had made on Earth as an eccentric,
but a harmless one – an unruly boozer with some oddish habits. For
instance he would often gatecrash university parties, get badly drunk and
start making fun of any astrophysicist he could find till he got thrown
out.
Sometimes he would get seized with oddly distracted moods and stare
into the sky as if hypnotized until someone asked him what he was doing.
Then he would start guiltily for a moment, relax and grin.
“Oh, just looking for flying saucers,” he would joke and everyone
would laugh and ask him what sort of flying saucers he was looking for.
“Green ones!” he would reply with a wicked grin, laugh wildly for a
moment and then suddenly lunge for the nearest bar and buy an enormous
round of drinks.
Evenings like this usually ended badly. Ford would get out of his
skull on whisky, huddle into a corner with some girl and explain to her in
slurred phrases that honestly the colour of the flying saucers didn’t
matter that much really.
Thereafter, staggering semi-paralytic down the night streets he would
often ask passing policemen if they knew the way to Betelgeuse. The
policemen would usually say something like, “Don’t you think it’s about
time you went off home sir?”
“I’m trying to baby, I’m trying to,” is what Ford invariably replied
on these occasions.
In fact what he was really looking out for when he stared
distractedly into the night sky was any kind of flying saucer at all. The
reason he said green was that green was the traditional space livery of
the Betelgeuse trading scouts.
Ford Prefect was desperate that any flying saucer at all would arrive
soon because fifteen years was a long time to get stranded anywhere,
particularly somewhere as mindboggingly dull as the Earth.
Ford wished that a flying saucer would arrive soon because he knew
how to flag flying saucers down and get lifts from them. He knew how to
see the Marvels of the Universe for less than thirty Altairan dollars a
day.
In fact, Ford Prefect was a roving researcher for that wholly
remarkable book The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
Human beings are great adaptors, and by lunchtime life in the
environs of Arthur’s house had settled into a steady routine. It was
Arthur’s accepted role to lie squelching in the mud making occasional
demands to see his lawyer, his mother or a good book; it was Mr Prosser’s
accepted role to tackle Arthur with the occasional new ploy such as the
For the Public Good talk, the March of Progress talk, the They Knocked My
House Down Once You Know, Never Looked Back talk and various other
cajoleries and threats; and it was the bulldozer drivers’ accepted role to
sit around drinking coffee and experimenting with union regulations to see
how they could turn the situation to their financial advantage.
The Earth moved slowly in its diurnal course.
The sun was beginning to dry out the mud Arthur lay in.
A shadow moved across him again.
“Hello Arthur,” said the shadow.
Arthur looked up and squinting into the sun was startled to see Ford
Prefect standing above him.
“Ford! Hello, how are you?”
“Fine,” said Ford, “look, are you busy?”
“Am I busy?” exclaimed Arthur. “Well, I’ve just got all these
bulldozers and things to lie in front of because they’ll knock my house
down if I don’t, but other than that… well, no not especially, why?”
They don’t have sarcasm on Betelgeuse, and Ford Prefect often failed
to notice it unless he was concentrating. He said, “Good, is there
anywhere we can talk?”
“What?” said Arthur Dent.
For a few seconds Ford seemed to ignore him, and stared fixedly into
the sky like a rabbit trying to get run over by a car. Then suddenly he
squatted down beside Arthur.
“We’ve got to talk,” he said urgently.
“Fine,” said Arthur, “talk.”
“And drink,” said Ford. “It’s vitally important that we talk and
drink. Now. We’ll go to the pub in the village.”
He looked into the sky again, nervous, expectant.
“Look, don’t you understand?” shouted Arthur. He pointed at Prosser.
“That man wants to knock my house down!”
Ford glanced at him, puzzled.
“Well he can do it while you’re away can’t he?” he asked.
“But I don’t want him to!”
“Ah.”
“Look, what’s the matter with you Ford?” said Arthur.
“Nothing. Nothing’s the matter. Listen to me – I’ve got to tell you
the most important thing you’ve ever heard. I’ve got to tell you now, and
I’ve got to tell you in the saloon bar of the Horse and Groom.”
“But why?”
“Because you are going to need a very stiff drink.”
Ford stared at Arthur, and Arthur was astonished to find that his
will was beginning to weaken. He didn’t realize that this was because of
an old drinking game that Ford learned to play in the hyperspace ports
that served the madranite mining belts in the star system of Orion Beta.
The game was not unlike the Earth game called Indian Wrestling, and
was played like this:
Two contestants would sit either side of a table, with a glass in
front of each of them.
Between them would be placed a bottle of Janx Spirit (as immortalized
in that ancient Orion mining song “Oh don’t give me none more of that Old
Janx Spirit/ No, don’t you give me none more of that Old Janx Spirit/ For
my head will fly, my tongue will lie, my eyes will fry and I may die/
Won’t you pour me one more of that sinful Old Janx Spirit”).
Each of the two contestants would then concentrate their will on the
bottle and attempt to tip it and pour spirit into the glass of his
opponent – who would then have to drink it.
The bottle would then be refilled. The game would be played again.
And again.
Once you started to lose you would probably keep losing, because one
of the effects of Janx spirit is to depress telepsychic power.
As soon as a predetermined quantity had been consumed, the final
loser would have to perform a forfeit, which was usually obscenely
biological.
Ford Prefect usually played to lose.
Ford stared at Arthur, who began to think that perhaps he did want to
go to the Horse and Groom after all.
“But what about my house?..” he asked plaintively.
Ford looked across to Mr Prosser, and suddenly a wicked thought
struck him.
“He wants to knock your house down?”
“Yes, he wants to build…”
“And he can’t because you’re lying in front of the bulldozers?”
“Yes, and…”
“I’m sure we can come to some arrangement,” said Ford. “Excuse me!”
he shouted.
Mr Prosser (who was arguing with a spokesman for the bulldozer
drivers about whether or not Arthur Dent constituted a mental health
hazard, and how much they should get paid if he did) looked around. He was
surprised and slightly alarmed to find that Arthur had company.
“Yes? Hello?” he called. “Has Mr Dent come to his senses yet?”
“Can we for the moment,” called Ford, “assume that he hasn’t?”
“Well?” sighed Mr Prosser.
“And can we also assume,” said Ford, “that he’s going to be staying
here all day?”
“So?”
“So all your men are going to be standing around all day doing
nothing?”
“Could be, could be…”
“Well, if you’re resigned to doing that anyway, you don’t actually
need him to lie here all the time do you?”
“What?”
“You don’t,” said Ford patiently, “actually need him here.”
Mr Prosser thought about this.
“Well no, not as such…”, he said, “not exactly need…” Prosser was
worried. He thought that one of them wasn’t making a lot of sense.
Ford said, “So if you would just like to take it as read that he’s
actually here, then he and I could slip off down to the pub for half an
hour. How does that sound?”
Mr Prosser thought it sounded perfectly potty.
“That sounds perfectly reasonable,” he said in a reassuring tone of
voice, wondering who he was trying to reassure.
“And if you want to pop off for a quick one yourself later on,” said
Ford, “we can always cover up for you in return.”
“Thank you very much,” said Mr Prosser who no longer knew how to play
this at all, “thank you very much, yes, that’s very kind…” He frowned,
then smiled, then tried to do both at once, failed, grasped hold of his
fur hat and rolled it fitfully round the top of his head. He could only
assume that he had just won.
“So,” continued Ford Prefect, “if you would just like to come over
here and lie down…”
“What?” said Mr Prosser.
“Ah, I’m sorry,” said Ford, “perhaps I hadn’t made myself fully
clear. Somebody’s got to lie in front of the bulldozers haven’t they? Or
there won’t be anything to stop them driving into Mr Dent’s house will
there?”
“What?” said Mr Prosser again.
“It’s very simple,” said Ford, “my client, Mr Dent, says that he will
stop lying here in the mud on the sole condition that you come and take
over from him.”
“What are you talking about?” said Arthur, but Ford nudged him with
his shoe to be quiet.
“You want me,” said Mr Prosser, spelling out this new thought to
himself, “to come and lie there…”
“Yes.”
“In front of the bulldozer?”
“Yes.”
“Instead of Mr Dent.”
“Yes.”
“In the mud.”
“In, as you say it, the mud.”
As soon as Mr Prosser realized that he was substantially the loser
after all, it was as if a weight lifted itself off his shoulders: this was
more like the world as he knew it. He sighed.
“In return for which you will take Mr Dent with you down to the pub?”
“That’s it,” said Ford. “That’s it exactly.”
Mr Prosser took a few nervous steps forward and stopped.
“Promise?”
“Promise,” said Ford. He turned to Arthur.
“Come on,” he said to him, “get up and let the man lie down.”
Arthur stood up, feeling as if he was in a dream.
Ford beckoned to Prosser who sadly, awkwardly, sat down in the mud.
He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes
wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it. The mud folded
itself round his bottom and his arms and oozed into his shoes.
Ford looked at him severely.
“And no sneaky knocking down Mr Dent’s house whilst he’s away,
alright?” he said.
“The mere thought,” growled Mr Prosser, “hadn’t even begun to
speculate,” he continued, settling himself back, “about the merest
possibility of crossing my mind.”
He saw the bulldozer driver’s union representative approaching and
let his head sink back and closed his eyes. He was trying to marshal his
arguments for proving that he did not now constitute a mental health
hazard himself. He was far from certain about this – his mind seemed to be
full of noise, horses, smoke, and the stench of blood. This always
happened when he felt miserable and put upon, and he had never been able
to explain it to himself. In a high dimension of which we know nothing the
mighty Khan bellowed with rage, but Mr Prosser only trembled slightly and
whimpered. He began to fell little pricks of water behind the eyelids.
Bureaucratic cock-ups, angry men lying in the mud, indecipherable
strangers handing out inexplicable humiliations and an unidentified army
of horsemen laughing at him in his head – what a day.
What a day. Ford Prefect knew that it didn’t matter a pair of dingo’s
kidneys whether Arthur’s house got knocked down or not now.
Arthur remained very worried.
“But can we trust him?” he said.
“Myself I’d trust him to the end of the Earth,” said Ford.
“Oh yes,” said Arthur, “and how far’s that?”
“About twelve minutes away,” said Ford, “come on, I need a drink.”

2

Here’s what the Encyclopedia Galactica has to say about alcohol. It
says that alcohol is a colourless volatile liquid formed by the
fermentation of sugars and also notes its intoxicating effect on certain
carbon-based life forms.
The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy also mentions alcohol. It says
that the best drink in existence is the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster.
It says that the effect of a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster is like
having your brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large
gold brick.
The Guide also tells you on which planets the best Pan Galactic
Gargle Blasters are mixed, how much you can expect to pay for one and what
voluntary organizations exist to help you rehabilitate afterwards.
The Guide even tells you how you can mix one yourself.
Take the juice from one bottle of that Ol’ Janx Spirit, it says.
Pour into it one measure of water from the seas of Santraginus V – Oh
that Santraginean sea water, it says. Oh those Santraginean fish!!!
Allow three cubes of Arcturan Mega-gin to melt into the mixture (it
must be properly iced or the benzine is lost).
Allow four litres of Fallian marsh gas to bubble through it, in
memory of all those happy Hikers who have died of pleasure in the Marshes
of Fallia.
Over the back of a silver spoon float a measure of Qualactin
Hypermint extract, redolent of all the heady odours of the dark Qualactin
Zones, subtle sweet and mystic.
Drop in the tooth of an Algolian Suntiger. Watch it dissolve,
spreading the fires of the Algolian Suns deep into the heart of the drink.
Sprinkle Zamphuor.
Add an olive.
Drink… but… very carefully…
The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy sells rather better than the
Encyclopedia Galactica.
“Six pints of bitter,” said Ford Prefect to the barman of the Horse
and Groom. “And quickly please, the world’s about to end.”
The barman of the Horse and Groom didn’t deserve this sort of
treatment, he was a dignified old man. He pushed his glasses up his nose
and blinked at Ford Prefect. Ford ignored him and stared out of the
window, so the barman looked instead at Arthur who shrugged helplessly and
said nothing.
So the barman said, “Oh yes sir? Nice weather for it,” and started
pulling pints.
He tried again.
“Going to watch the match this afternoon then?”
Ford glanced round at him.
“No, no point,” he said, and looked back out of the window.
“What’s that, foregone conclusion then you reckon sir?” said the
barman. “Arsenal without a chance?”
“No, no,” said Ford, “it’s just that the world’s about to end.”
“Oh yes sir, so you said,” said the barman, looking over his glasses
this time at Arthur. “Lucky escape for Arsenal if it did.”
Ford looked back at him, genuinely surprised.
“No, not really,” he said. He frowned.
The barman breathed in heavily. “There you are sir, six pints,” he
said.
Arthur smiled at him wanly and shrugged again. He turned and smiled
wanly at the rest of the pub just in case any of them had heard what was
going on.
None of them had, and none of them could understand what he was
smiling at them for.
A man sitting next to Ford at the bar looked at the two men, looked
at the six pints, did a swift burst of mental arithmetic, arrived at an
answer he liked and grinned a stupid hopeful grin at them.
“Get off,” said Ford, “They’re ours,” giving him a look that would
have an Algolian Suntiger get on with what it was doing.
Ford slapped a five-pound note on the bar. He said, “Keep the
change.”
“What, from a fiver? Thank you sir.”
“You’ve got ten minutes left to spend it.”
The barman simply decided to walk away for a bit.
“Ford,” said Arthur, “would you please tell me what the hell is going
on?”
“Drink up,” said Ford, “you’ve got three pints to get through.”
“Three pints?” said Arthur. “At lunchtime?”
The man next to ford grinned and nodded happily. Ford ignored him. He
said, “Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.”
“Very deep,” said Arthur, “you should send that in to the Reader’s
Digest. They’ve got a page for people like you.”
“Drink up.”
“Why three pints all of a sudden?”
“Muscle relaxant, you’ll need it.”
“Muscle relaxant?”
“Muscle relaxant.”
Arthur stared into his beer.
“Did I do anything wrong today,” he said, “or has the world always
been like this and I’ve been too wrapped up in myself to notice?”
“Alright,” said Ford, “I’ll try to explain. How long have we known
each other?”
“How long?” Arthur thought. “Er, about five years, maybe six,” he
said. “Most of it seemed to make some sense at the time.”
“Alright,” said Ford. “How would you react if I said that I’m not
from Guildford after all, but from a small planet somewhere in the
vicinity of Betelgeuse?”
Arthur shrugged in a so-so sort of way.
“I don’t know,” he said, taking a pull of beer. “Why – do you think
it’s the sort of thing you’re likely to say?”
Ford gave up. It really wasn’t worth bothering at the moment, what
with the world being about to end. He just said:
“Drink up.”
He added, perfectly factually:
“The world’s about to end.”
Arthur gave the rest of the pub another wan smile. The rest of the
pub frowned at him. A man waved at him to stop smiling at them and mind
his own business.
“This must be Thursday,” said Arthur musing to himself, sinking low
over his beer, “I never could get the hang of Thursdays.”

3

On this particular Thursday, something was moving quietly through the
ionosphere many miles above the surface of the planet; several somethings
in fact, several dozen huge yellow chunky slablike somethings, huge as
office buildings, silent as birds. They soared with ease, basking in
electromagnetic rays from the star Sol, biding their time, grouping,
preparing.
The planet beneath them was almost perfectly oblivious of their
presence, which was just how they wanted it for the moment. The huge
yellow somethings went unnoticed at Goonhilly, they passed over Cape
Canaveral without a blip, Woomera and Jodrell Bank looked straight through
them – which was a pity because it was exactly the sort of thing they’d
been looking for all these years.
The only place they registered at all was on a small black device
called a Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic which winked away quietly to itself. It
nestled in the darkness inside a leather satchel which Ford Prefect wore
habitually round his neck. The contents of Ford Prefect’s satchel were
quite interesting in fact and would have made any Earth physicist’s eyes
pop out of his head, which is why he always concealed them by keeping a
couple of dog-eared scripts for plays he pretended he was auditioning for
stuffed in the top. Besides the Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic and the scripts he
had an Electronic Thumb – a short squat black rod, smooth and matt with a
couple of flat switches and dials at one end; he also had a device which
looked rather like a largish electronic calculator. This had about a
hundred tiny flat press buttons and a screen about four inches square on
which any one of a million “pages” could be summoned at a moment’s notice.
It looked insanely complicated, and this was one of the reasons why the
snug plastic cover it fitted into had the words Don’t Panic printed on it
in large friendly letters. The other reason was that this device was in
fact that most remarkable of all books ever to come out of the great
publishing corporations of Ursa Minor – The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the
Galaxy. The reason why it was published in the form of a micro sub meson
electronic component is that if it were printed in normal book form, an
interstellar hitch hiker would require several inconveniently large
buildings to carry it around in.
Beneath that in Ford Prefect’s satchel were a few biros, a notepad,
and a largish bath towel from Marks and Spencer.
The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say on the
subject of towels.
A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an
interstellar hitch hiker can have. Partly it has great practical value -
you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons
of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches
of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it
beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon;
use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use
in hand-tohand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes
or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a
mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t
see you – daft as a bush, but very ravenous); you can wave your towel in
emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it
if it still seems to be clean enough.
More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some
reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker
has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in
possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask,
compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit
etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker
any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might
accidentally have “lost”. What the strag will think is that any man who
can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it,
struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his
towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.
Hence a phrase which has passed into hitch hiking slang, as in “Hey,
you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There’s a frood who really knows where
his towel is.” (Sass: know, be aware of, meet, have sex with; hoopy:
really together guy; frood: really amazingly together guy.)
Nestling quietly on top of the towel in Ford Prefect’s satchel, the
Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic began to wink more quickly. Miles above the surface
of the planet the huge yellow somethings began to fan out. At Jodrell
Bank, someone decided it was time for a nice relaxing cup of tea.
“You got a towel with you?” said Ford Prefect suddenly to Arthur.
Arthur, struggling through his third pint, looked round at him.
“Why? What, no… should I have?” He had given up being surprised,
there didn’t seem to be any point any longer.
Ford clicked his tongue in irritation.
“Drink up,” he urged.
At that moment the dull sound of a rumbling crash from outside
filtered through the low murmur of the pub, through the sound of the
jukebox, through the sound of the man next to Ford hiccupping over the
whisky Ford had eventually bought him.
Arthur choked on his beer, leapt to his feet.
“What’s that?” he yelped.
“Don’t worry,” said Ford, “they haven’t started yet.”
“Thank God for that,” said Arthur and relaxed.
“It’s probably just your house being knocked down,” said Ford,
drowning his last pint.
“What?” shouted Arthur. Suddenly Ford’s spell was broken. Arthur
looked wildly around him and ran to the window.
“My God they are! They’re knocking my house down. What the hell am I
doing in the pub, Ford?”
“It hardly makes any difference at this stage,” said Ford, “let them
have their fun.”
“Fun?” yelped Arthur. “Fun!” He quickly checked out of the window
again that they were talking about the same thing.
“Damn their fun!” he hooted and ran out of the pub furiously waving a
nearly empty beer glass. He made no friends at all in the pub that
lunchtime.
“Stop, you vandals! You home wreckers!” bawled Arthur. “You half
crazed Visigoths, stop will you!”
Ford would have to go after him. Turning quickly to the barman he
asked for four packets of peanuts.
“There you are sir,” said the barman, slapping the packets on the
bar, “twenty-eight pence if you’d be so kind.”
Ford was very kind – he gave the barman another five-pound note and
told him to keep the change. The barman looked at it and then looked at
Ford. He suddenly shivered: he experienced a momentary sensation that he
didn’t understand because no one on Earth had ever experienced it before.
In moments of great stress, every life form that exists gives out a tiny
sublimal signal. This signal simply communicates an exact and almost
pathetic sense of how far that being is from the place of his birth. On
Earth it is never possible to be further than sixteen thousand miles from
your birthplace, which really isn’t very far, so such signals are too
minute to be noticed. Ford Prefect was at this moment under great stress,
and he was born 600 light years away in the near vicinity of Betelgeuse.
The barman reeled for a moment, hit by a shocking, incomprehensible
sense of distance. He didn’t know what it meant, but he looked at Ford
Prefect with a new sense of respect, almost awe.
“Are you serious, sir?” he said in a small whisper which had the
effect of silencing the pub. “You think the world’s going to end?”
“Yes,” said Ford.
“But, this afternoon?”
Ford had recovered himself. He was at his flippest.
“Yes,” he said gaily, “in less than two minutes I would estimate.”
The barman couldn’t believe the conversation he was having, but he
couldn’t believe the sensation he had just had either.
“Isn’t there anything we can do about it then?” he said.
“No, nothing,” said Ford, stuffing the peanuts into his pockets.
Someone in the hushed bar suddenly laughed raucously at how stupid
everyone had become.
The man sitting next to Ford was a bit sozzled by now. His eyes waved
their way up to Ford.
“I thought,” he said, “that if the world was going to end we were
meant to lie down or put a paper bag over our head or something.”
“If you like, yes,” said Ford.
“That’s what they told us in the army,” said the man, and his eyes
began the long trek back down to his whisky.
“Will that help?” asked the barman.
“No,” said Ford and gave him a friendly smile. “Excuse me,” he said,
“I’ve got to go.” With a wave, he left.
The pub was silent for a moment longer, and then, embarrassingly
enough, the man with the raucous laugh did it again. The girl he had
dragged along to the pub with him had grown to loathe him dearly over the
last hour or so, and it would probably have been a great satisfaction to
her to know that in a minute and a half or so he would suddenly evaporate
into a whiff of hydrogen, ozone and carbon monoxide. However, when the
moment came she would be too busy evaporating herself to notice it.
The barman cleared his throat. He heard himself say:
“Last orders, please.”
The huge yellow machines began to sink downward and to move faster.
Ford knew they were there. This wasn’t the way he had wanted it.
Running up the lane, Arthur had nearly reached his house. He didn’t
notice how cold it had suddenly become, he didn’t notice the wind, he
didn’t notice the sudden irrational squall of rain. He didn’t notice
anything but the caterpillar bulldozers crawling over the rubble that had
been his home.
“You barbarians!” he yelled. “I’ll sue the council for every penny
it’s got! I’ll have you hung, drawn and quartered! And whipped! And
boiled… until… until… until you’ve had enough.”
Ford was running after him very fast. Very very fast.
“And then I’ll do it again!” yelled Arthur. “And when I’ve finished I
will take all the little bits, and I will jump on them!”
Arthur didn’t notice that the men were running from the bulldozers;
he didn’t notice that Mr Prosser was staring hectically into the sky. What
Mr Prosser had noticed was that huge yellow somethings were screaming
through the clouds. Impossibly huge yellow somethings.
“And I will carry on jumping on them,” yelled Arthur, still running,
“until I get blisters, or I can think of anything even more unpleasant to
do, and then…”
Arthur tripped, and fell headlong, rolled and landed flat on his
back. At last he noticed that something was going on. His finger shot
upwards.
“What the hell’s that?” he shrieked.
Whatever it was raced across the sky in monstrous yellowness, tore
the sky apart with mind-buggering noise and leapt off into the distance
leaving the gaping air to shut behind it with a bang that drove your ears
six feet into your skull.
Another one followed and did the same thing only louder.
It’s difficult to say exactly what the people on the surface of the
planet were doing now, because they didn’t really know what they were
doing themselves. None of it made a lot of sense – running into houses,
running out of houses, howling noiselessly at the noise. All around the
world city streets exploded with people, cars slewed into each other as
the noise fell on them and then rolled off like a tidal wave over hills
and valleys, deserts and oceans, seeming to flatten everything it hit.
Only one man stood and watched the sky, stood with terrible sadness
in his eyes and rubber bungs in his ears. He knew exactly what was
happening and had known ever since his Sub-Etha Sens-OMatic had started
winking in the dead of night beside his pillar and woken him with a start.
It was what he had waited for all these years, but when he had deciphered
the signal pattern sitting alone in his small dark room a coldness had
gripped him and squeezed his heart. Of all the races in all of the Galaxy
who could have come and said a big hello to planet Earth, he thought,
didn’t it just have to be the Vogons.
Still he knew what he had to do. As the Vogon craft screamed through
the air high above him he opened his satchel. He threw away a copy of
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, he threw away a copy of
Godspell: He wouldn’t need them where he was going. Everything was ready,
everything was prepared.
He knew where his towel was.
A sudden silence hit the Earth. If anything it was worse than the
noise. For a while nothing happened.
The great ships hung motionless in the air, over every nation on
Earth. Motionless they hung, huge, heavy, steady in the sky, a blasphemy
against nature. Many people went straight into shock as their minds tried
to encompass what they were looking at. The ships hung in the sky in much
the same way that bricks don’t.
And still nothing happened.
Then there was a slight whisper, a sudden spacious whisper of open
ambient sound. Every hi fi set in the world, every radio, every
television, every cassette recorder, every woofer, every tweeter, every
mid-range driver in the world quietly turned itself on.
Every tin can, every dust bin, every window, every car, every wine
glass, every sheet of rusty metal became activated as an acoustically
perfect sounding board.
Before the Earth passed away it was going to be treated to the very
ultimate in sound reproduction, the greatest public address system ever
built. But there was no concert, no music, no fanfare, just a simple
message.
“People of Earth, your attention please,” a voice said, and it was
wonderful. Wonderful perfect quadrophonic sound with distortion levels so
low as to make a brave man weep.
“This is Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz of the Galactic Hyperspace Planning
Council,” the voice continued. “As you will no doubt be aware, the plans
for development of the outlying regions of the Galaxy require the building
of a hyperspatial express route through your star system, and regrettably
your planet is one of those scheduled for demolition. The process will
take slightly less that two of your Earth minutes. Thank you.”
The PA died away.
Uncomprehending terror settled on the watching people of Earth. The
terror moved slowly through the gathered crowds as if they were iron
fillings on a sheet of board and a magnet was moving beneath them. Panic
sprouted again, desperate fleeing panic, but there was nowhere to flee to.
Observing this, the Vogons turned on their PA again. It said:
“There’s no point in acting all surprised about it. All the planning
charts and demolition orders have been on display in your local planning
department on Alpha Centauri for fifty of your Earth years, so you’ve had
plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint and it’s far too late to
start making a fuss about it now.”
The PA fell silent again and its echo drifted off across the land.
The huge ships turned slowly in the sky with easy power. On the underside
of each a hatchway opened, an empty black space.
By this time somebody somewhere must have manned a radio transmitter,
located a wavelength and broadcasted a message back to the Vogon ships, to
plead on behalf of the planet. Nobody ever heard what they said, they only
heard the reply. The PA slammed back into life again. The voice was
annoyed. It said:
“What do you mean you’ve never been to Alpha Centauri? For heaven’s
sake mankind, it’s only four light years away you know. I’m sorry, but if
you can’t be bothered to take an interest in local affairs that’s your own
lookout.
“Energize the demolition beams.”
Light poured out into the hatchways.
“I don’t know,” said the voice on the PA, “apathetic bloody planet,
I’ve no sympathy at all.” It cut off.
There was a terrible ghastly silence.
There was a terrible ghastly noise.
There was a terrible ghastly silence.
The Vogon Constructor fleet coasted away into the inky starry void.

4

Far away on the opposite spiral arm of the Galaxy, five hundred
thousand light years from the star Sol, Zaphod Beeblebrox, President of
the Imperial Galactic Government, sped across the seas of Damogran, his
ion drive delta boat winking and flashing in the Damogran sun.
Damogran the hot; Damogran the remote; Damogran the almost totally
unheard of.
Damogran, secret home of the Heart of Gold.
The boat sped on across the water. It would be some time before it
reached its destination because Damogran is such an inconveniently
arranged planet. It consists of nothing but middling to large desert
islands separated by very pretty but annoyingly wide stretches of ocean.
The boat sped on.
Because of this topological awkwardness Damogran has always remained
a deserted planet. This is why the Imperial Galactic Government chose
Damogran for the Heart of Gold project, because it was so deserted and the
Heart of Gold was so secret.
The boat zipped and skipped across the sea, the sea that lay between
the main islands of the only archipelago of any useful size on the whole
planet. Zaphod Beeblebrox was on his way from the tiny spaceport on Easter
Island (the name was an entirely meaningless coincidence – in
Galacticspeke, easter means small flat and light brown) to the Heart of
Gold island, which by another meaningless coincidence was called France.
One of the side effects of work on the Heart of Gold was a whole
string of pretty meaningless coincidences.
But it was not in any way a coincidence that today, the day of
culmination of the project, the great day of unveiling, the day that the
Heart of Gold was finally to be introduced to a marvelling Galaxy, was
also a great day of culmination for Zaphod Beeblebrox. It was for the sake
of this day that he had first decided to run for the Presidency, a
decision which had sent waves of astonishment throughout the Imperial
Galaxy – Zaphod Beeblebrox? President? Not the Zaphod Beeblebrox? Not the
President? Many had seen it as a clinching proof that the whole of known
creation had finally gone bananas.
Zaphod grinned and gave the boat an extra kick of speed.
Zaphod Beeblebrox, adventurer, ex-hippy, good timer, (crook? quite
possibly), manic self-publicist, terribly bad at personal relationships,
often thought to be completely out to lunch.
President?
No one had gone bananas, not in that way at least.
Only six people in the entire Galaxy understood the principle on
which the Galaxy was governed, and they knew that once Zaphod Beeblebrox
had announced his intention to run as President it was more or less a fait
accompli: he was the ideal Presidency fodder.
[President: full title President of the Imperial Galactic Government.
The term Imperial is kept though it is now an anachronism. The
hereditary Emperor is nearly dead and has been so for many centuries. In
the last moments of his dying coma he was locked in a statis field which
keeps him in a state of perpetual unchangingness. All his heirs are now
long dead, and this means that without any drastic political upheaval,
power has simply and effectively moved a rung or two down the ladder, and
is now seen to be vested in a body which used to act simply as advisers to
the Emperor - an elected Governmental assembly headed by a President
elected by that assembly. In fact it vests in no such place.
The President in particular is very much a figurehead - he wields no
real power whatsoever. He is apparently chosen by the government, but the
qualities he is required to display are not those of leadership but those
of finely judged outrage. For this reason the President is always a
controversial choice, always an infuriating but fascinating character. His
job is not to wield power but to draw attention away from it. On those
criteria Zaphod Beeblebrox is one of the most successful Presidents the
Galaxy has ever had - he has already spent two of his ten Presidential
years in prison for fraud. Very very few people realize that the President
and the Government have virtually no power at all, and of these very few
people only six know whence ultimate political power is wielded. Most of
the others secretly believe that the ultimate decision-making process is
handled by a computer. They couldn't be more wrong.]
What they completely failed to understand was why Zaphod was doing
it.
He banked sharply, shooting a wild wall of water at the sun.
Today was the day; today was the day when they would realize what
Zaphod had been up to. Today was what Zaphod Beeblebrox’s Presidency was
all about. Today was also his two hundredth birthday, but that was just
another meaningless coincidence.
As he skipped his boat across the seas of Damogran he smiled quietly
to himself about what a wonderful exciting day it was going to be. He
relaxed and spread his two arms lazily across the seat back. He steered
with an extra arm he’d recently fitted just beneath his right one to help
improve his ski-boxing.
“Hey,” he cooed to himself, “you’re a real cool boy you.” But his
nerves sang a song shriller than a dog whistle.
The island of France was about twenty miles long, five miles across
the middle, sandy and crescent shaped. In fact it seemed to exist not so
much as an island in its own right as simply a means of defining the sweep
and curve of a huge bay. This impression was heightened by the fact that
the inner coastline of the crescent consisted almost entirely of steep
cliffs. From the top of the cliff the land sloped slowly down five miles
to the opposite shore.
On top of the cliffs stood a reception committee.
It consisted in large part of the engineers and researchers who had
built the Heart of Gold – mostly humanoid, but here and there were a few
reptiloid atomineers, two or three green slyph-like maximegalacticans, an
octopoid physucturalist or two and a Hooloovoo (a Hooloovoo is a
super-intelligent shade of the color blue). All except the Hooloovoo were
resplendent in their multicolored ceremonial lab coats; the Hooloovoo had
been temporarily refracted into a free standing prism for the occasion.
There was a mood of immense excitement thrilling through all of them.
Together and between them they had gone to and beyond the furthest limits
of physical laws, restructured the fundamental fabric of matter, strained,
twisted and broken the laws of possibility and impossibility, but still
the greatest excitement of all seemed to be to meet a man with an orange
sash round his neck. (An orange sash was what the President of the Galaxy
traditionally wore.) It might not even have made much difference to them
if they’d known exactly how much power the President of the Galaxy
actually wielded: none at all. Only six people in the Galaxy knew that the
job of the Galactic President was not to wield power but to attract
attention away from it.
Zaphod Beeblebrox was amazingly good at his job.
The crowd gasped, dazzled by sun and seemanship, as the Presidential
speedboat zipped round the headland into the bay. It flashed and shone as
it came skating over the sea in wide skidding turns.
In fact it didn’t need to touch the water at all, because it was
supported on a hazy cushion of ionized atoms – but just for effect it was
fitted with thin finblades which could be lowered into the water. They
slashed sheets of water hissing into the air, carved deep gashes into the
sea which swayed crazily and sank back foaming into the boat’s wake as it
careered across the bay.
Zaphod loved effect: it was what he was best at.
He twisted the wheel sharply, the boat slewed round in a wild
scything skid beneath the cliff face and dropped to rest lightly on the
rocking waves.
Within seconds he ran out onto the deck and waved and grinned at over
three billion people. The three billion people weren’t actually there, but
they watched his every gesture through the eyes of a small robot tri-D
camera which hovered obsequiously in the air nearby. The antics of the
President always made amazingly popular tri-D; that’s what they were for.
He grinned again. Three billion and six people didn’t know it, but
today would be a bigger antic than anyone had bargained for.
The robot camera homed in for a close up on the more popular of his
two heads and he waved again. He was roughly humanoid in appearance except
for the extra head and third arm. His fair tousled hair stuck out in
random directions, his blue eyes glinted with something completely
unidentifiable, and his chins were almost always unshaven.
A twenty-foot-high transparent globe floated next to his boat,
rolling and bobbing, glistening in the brilliant sun. Inside it floated a
wide semi-circular sofa upholstered in glorious red leather: the more the
globe bobbed and rolled, the more the sofa stayed perfectly still, steady
as an upholstered rock. Again, all done for effect as much as anything.
Zaphod stepped through the wall of the globe and relaxed on the sofa.
He spread his two arms lazily along the back and with the third brushed
some dust off his knee. His heads looked about, smiling; he put his feet
up. At any moment, he thought, he might scream.
Water boiled up beneath the bubble, it seethed and spouted. The
bubble surged into the air, bobbing and rolling on the water spout. Up, up
it climbed, throwing stilts of light at the cliff. Up it surged on the
jet, the water falling from beneath it, crashing back into the sea
hundreds of feet below.
Zaphod smiled, picturing himself.
A thoroughly ridiculous form of transport, but a thoroughly beautiful
one.
At the top of the cliff the globe wavered for a moment, tipped on to
a railed ramp, rolled down it to a small concave platform and riddled to a
halt.
To tremendous applause Zaphod Beeblebrox stepped out of the bubble,
his orange sash blazing in the light.
The President of the Galaxy had arrived.
He waited for the applause to die down, then raised his hands in
greeting.
“Hi,” he said.
A government spider sidled up to him and attempted to press a copy of
his prepared speech into his hands. Pages three to seven of the original
version were at the moment floating soggily on the Damogran sea some five
miles out from the bay. Pages one and two had been salvaged by a Damogran
Frond Crested Eagle and had already become incorporated into an
extraordinary new form of nest which the eagle had invented. It was
constructed largely of papier m@ch@ and it was virtually impossible for a
newly hatched baby eagle to break out of it. The Damogran Frond Crested
Eagle had heard of the notion of survival of the species but wanted no
truck with it.
Zaphod Beeblebrox would not be needing his set speech and he gently
deflected the one being offered him by the spider.
“Hi,” he said again.
Everyone beamed at him, or, at least, nearly everyone. He singled out
Trillian from the crowd. Trillian was a gird that Zaphod had picked up
recently whilst visiting a planet, just for fun, incognito. She was slim,
darkish, humanoid, with long waves of black hair, a full mouth, an odd
little nob of a nose and ridiculously brown eyes. With her red head scarf
knotted in that particular way and her long flowing silky brown dress she
looked vaguely Arabic. Not that anyone there had ever heard of an Arab of
course. The Arabs had very recently ceased to exist, and even when they
had existed they were five hundred thousand light years from Damogran.
Trillian wasn’t anybody in particular, or so Zaphod claimed. She just went
around with him rather a lot and told him what she thought of him.
“Hi honey,” he said to her.
She flashed him a quick tight smile and looked away. Then she looked
back for a moment and smiled more warmly – but by this time he was looking
at something else.
“Hi,” he said to a small knot of creatures from the press who were
standing nearby wishing that he would stop saying Hi and get on with the
quotes. He grinned at them particularly because he knew that in a few
moments he would be giving them one hell of a quote.
The next thing he said though was not a lot of use to them. One of
the officials of the party had irritably decided that the President was
clearly not in a mood to read the deliciously turned speech that had been
written for him, and had flipped the switch on the remote control device
in his pocket. Away in front of them a huge white dome that bulged against
the sky cracked down in the middle, split, and slowly folded itself down
into the ground. Everyone gasped although they had known perfectly well it
was going to do that because they had built it that way.
Beneath it lay uncovered a huge starship, one hundred and fifty
metres long, shaped like a sleek running shoe, perfectly white and
mindboggingly beautiful. At the heart of it, unseen, lay a small gold box
which carried within it the most brain-wretching device ever conceived, a
device which made this starship unique in the history of the galaxy, a
device after which the ship had been named – The Heart of Gold.
“Wow”, said Zaphod Beeblebrox to the Heart of Gold. There wasn’t much
else he could say.
He said it again because he knew it would annoy the press.
“Wow.”
The crowd turned their faces back towards him expectantly. He winked
at Trillian who raised her eyebrows and widened her eyes at him. She knew
what he was about to say and thought him a terrible showoff.
“That is really amazing,” he said. “That really is truly amazing.
That is so amazingly amazing I think I’d like to steal it.”
A marvellous Presidential quote, absolutely true to form. The crowd
laughed appreciatively, the newsmen gleefully punched buttons on their
Sub-Etha News-Matics and the President grinned.
As he grinned his heart screamed unbearably and he fingered the small
Paralyso-Matic bomb that nestled quietly in his pocket.
Finally he could bear it no more. He lifted his heads up to the sky,
let out a wild whoop in major thirds, threw the bomb to the ground and ran
forward through the sea of suddenly frozen smiles.

5

Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz was not a pleasant sight, even for other
Vogons. His highly domed nose rose high above a small piggy forehead. His
dark green rubbery skin was thick enough for him to play the game of Vogon
Civil Service politics, and play it well, and waterproof enough for him to
survive indefinitely at sea depths of up to a thousand feet with no ill
effects.
Not that he ever went swimming of course. His busy schedule would not
allow it. He was the way he was because billions of years ago when the
Vogons had first crawled out of the sluggish primeval seas of Vogsphere,
and had lain panting and heaving on the planet’s virgin shores… when the
first rays of the bright young Vogsol sun had shone across them that
morning, it was as if the forces of evolution ad simply given up on them
there and then, had turned aside in disgust and written them off as an
ugly and unfortunate mistake. They never evolved again; they should never
have survived.
The fact that they did is some kind of tribute to the thickwilled
slug-brained stubbornness of these creatures. Evolution? they said to
themselves, Who needs it?, and what nature refused to do for them they
simply did without until such time as they were able to rectify the
grosser anatomical inconveniences with surgery.
Meanwhile, the natural forces on the planet Vogsphere had been
working overtime to make up for their earlier blunder. They brought forth
scintillating jewelled scuttling crabs, which the Vogons ate, smashing
their shells with iron mallets; tall aspiring trees with breathtaking
slenderness and colour which the Vogons cut down and burned the crab meat
with; elegant gazellelike creatures with silken coats and dewy eyes which
the Vogons would catch and sit on. They were no use as transport because
their backs would snap instantly, but the Vogons sat on them anyway.
Thus the planet Vogsphere whiled away the unhappy millennia until the
Vogons suddenly discovered the principles of interstellar travel. Within a
few short Vog years every last Vogon had migrated to the Megabrantis
cluster, the political hub of the Galaxy and now formed the immensely
powerful backbone of the Galactic Civil Service. They have attempted to
acquire learning, they have attempted to acquire style and social grace,
but in most respects the modern Vogon is little different from his
primitive forebears. Every year they import twenty-seven thousand
scintillating jewelled scuttling crabs from their native planet and while
away a happy drunken night smashing them to bits with iron mallets.
Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz was a fairly typical Vogon in that he was
thoroughly vile. Also, he did not like hitch hikers.
Somewhere in a small dark cabin buried deep in the intestines of
Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz’s flagship, a small match flared nervously. The
owner of the match was not a Vogon, but he knew all about them and was
right to be nervous. His name was Ford Prefect*.
[Ford Prefect's original name is only pronuncible in an obscure
Betelgeusian dialect, now virtually extinct since the Great Collapsing
Hrung Disaster of Gal./Sid./Year 03758 which wiped out all the old
Praxibetel communities on Betelgeuse Seven. Ford's father was the only man
on the entire planet to survive the Great Collapsing Hrung disaster, by an
extraordinary coincidence that he was never able satisfactorily to
explain. The whole episode is shrouded in deep mystery: in fact no one
ever knew what a Hrung was nor why it had chosen to collapse on Betelgeuse
Seven particularly. Ford's father, magnanimously waving aside the clouds
of suspicion that had inevitably settled around him, came to live on
Betelgeuse Five where he both fathered and uncled Ford; in memory of his
now dead race he christened him in the ancient Praxibetel tongue.
Because Ford never learned to say his original name, his father
eventually died of shame, which is still a terminal disease in some parts
of the Galaxy. The other kids at school nicknamed him Ix, which in the
language of Betelgeuse Five translates as "boy who is not able
satisfactorily to explain what a Hrung is, nor why it should choose to
collapse on Betelgeuse Seven".]
He looked about the cabin but could see very little; strange
monstrous shadows loomed and leaped with the tiny flickering flame, but
all was quiet. He breathed a silent thank you to the Dentrassis. The
Dentrassis are an unruly tribe of gourmands, a wild but pleasant bunch
whom the Vogons had recently taken to employing as catering staff on their
long haul fleets, on the strict understanding that they keep themselves
very much to themselves.
This suited the Dentrassis fine, because they loved Vogon money,
which is one of the hardest currencies in space, but loathed the Vogons
themselves. The only sort of Vogon a Dentrassi liked to see was an annoyed
Vogon.
It was because of this tiny piece of information that Ford Prefect
was not now a whiff of hydrogen, ozone and carbon monoxide.
He heard a slight groan. By the light of the match he saw a heavy
shape moving slightly on the floor. Quickly he shook the match out,
reached in his pocket, found what he was looking for and took it out. He
crouched on the floor. The shape moved again.
Ford Prefect said: “I bought some peanuts.”
Arthur Dent moved, and groaned again, muttering incoherently.
“Here, have some,” urged Ford, shaking the packet again, “if you’ve
never been through a matter transference beam before you’ve probably lost
some salt and protein. The beer you had should have cushioned your system
a bit.”
“Whhhrrrr…” said Arthur Dent. He opened his eyes.
“It’s dark,” he said.
“Yes,” said Ford Prefect, “it’s dark.”
“No light,” said Arthur Dent. “Dark, no light.”
One of the things Ford Prefect had always found hardest to understand
about human beings was their habit of continually stating and repeating
the obvious, as in It’s a nice day, or You’re very tall, or Oh dear you
seem to have fallen down a thirty-foot well, are you alright? At first
Ford had formed a theory to account for this strange behaviour. If human
beings don’t keep exercising their lips, he thought, their mouths probably
seize up. After a few months’ consideration and observation he abandoned
this theory in favour of a new one. If they don’t keep on exercising their
lips, he thought, their brains start working. After a while he abandoned
this one as well as being obstructively cynical and decided he quite liked
human beings after all, but he always remained desperately worried about
the terrible number of things they didn’t know about.
“Yes,” he agreed with Arthur, “no light.” He helped Arthur to some
peanuts. “How do you feel?” he asked.
“Like a military academy,” said Arthur, “bits of me keep on passing
out.”
Ford stared at him blankly in the darkness.
“If I asked you where the hell we were,” said Arthur weakly, “would I
regret it?”
Ford stood up. “We’re safe,” he said.
“Oh good,” said Arthur.
“We’re in a small galley cabin,” said Ford, “in one of the spaceships
of the Vogon Constructor Fleet.”
“Ah,” said Arthur, “this is obviously some strange usage of the word
safe that I wasn’t previously aware of.”
Ford struck another match to help him search for a light switch.
Monstrous shadows leaped and loomed again. Arthur struggled to his feet
and hugged himself apprehensively. Hideous alien shapes seemed to throng
about him, the air was thick with musty smells which sidled into his lungs
without identifying themselves, and a low irritating hum kept his brain
from focusing.
“How did we get here?” he asked, shivering slightly.
“We hitched a lift,” said Ford.
“Excuse me?” said Arthur. “Are you trying to tell me that we just
stuck out our thumbs and some green bug-eyed monster stuck his head out
and said, Hi fellas, hop right in. I can take you as far as the
Basingstoke roundabout?”
“Well,” said Ford, “the Thumb’s an electronic sub-etha signalling
device, the roundabout’s at Barnard’s Star six light years away, but
otherwise, that’s more or less right.”
“And the bug-eyed monster?”
“Is green, yes.”
“Fine,” said Arthur, “when can I get home?”
“You can’t,” said Ford Prefect, and found the light switch.
“Shade your eyes…” he said, and turned it on.
Even Ford was surprised.
“Good grief,” said Arthur, “is this really the interior of a flying
saucer?”
Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz heaved his unpleasant green body round the
control bridge. He always felt vaguely irritable after demolishing
populated planets. He wished that someone would come and tell him that it
was all wrong so that he could shout at them and feel better. He flopped
as heavily as he could on to his control seat in the hope that it would
break and give him something to be genuinely angry about, but it only gave
a complaining sort of creak.
“Go away!” he shouted at a young Vogon guard who entered the bridge
at that moment. The guard vanished immediately, feeling rather relieved.
He was glad it wouldn’t now be him who delivered the report they’d just
received. The report was an official release which said that a wonderful
new form of spaceship drive was at this moment being unveiled at a
government research base on Damogran which would henceforth make all
hyperspatial express routes unnecessary.
Another door slid open, but this time the Vogon captain didn’t shout
because it was the door from the galley quarters where the Dentrassis
prepared his meals. A meal would be most welcome.
A huge furry creature bounded through the door with his lunch tray.
It was grinning like a maniac.
Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz was delighted. He knew that when a Dentrassi
looked that pleased with itself there was something going on somewhere on
the ship that he could get very angry indeed about.
Ford and Arthur stared about them.
“Well, what do you think?” said Ford.
“It’s a bit squalid, isn’t it?”
Ford frowned at the grubby mattress, unwashed cups and unidentifiable
bits of smelly alien underwear that lay around the cramped cabin.
“Well, this is a working ship, you see,” said Ford. “These are the
Dentrassi sleeping quarters.”
“I thought you said they were called Vogons or something.”
“Yes,” said Ford, “the Vogons run the ship, the Dentrassis are the
cooks, they let us on board.”
“I’m confused,” said Arthur.
“Here, have a look at this,” said Ford. He sat down on one of the
mattresses and rummaged about in his satchel. Arthur prodded the mattress
nervously and then sat on it himself: in fact he had very little to be
nervous about, because all mattresses grown in the swamps of
Squornshellous Zeta are very thoroughly killed and dried before being put
to service. Very few have ever come to life again.
Ford handed the book to Arthur.
“What is it?” asked Arthur.
“The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It’s a sort of electronic
book. It tells you everything you need to know about anything. That’s its
job.”
Arthur turned it over nervously in his hands.
“I like the cover,” he said. “Don’t Panic. It’s the first helpful or
intelligible thing anybody’s said to me all day.”
“I’ll show you how it works,” said Ford. He snatched it from Arthur
who was still holding it as if it was a two-week-dead lark and pulled it
out of its cover.
“You press this button here you see and the screen lights up giving
you the index.”
A screen, about three inches by four, lit up and characters began to
flicker across the surface.
“You want to know about Vogons, so I enter that name so.” His fingers
tapped some more keys. “And there we are.”
The words Vogon Constructor Fleets flared in green across the screen.
Ford pressed a large red button at the bottom of the screen and words
began to undulate across it. At the same time, the book began to speak the
entry as well in a still quiet measured voice. This is what the book said.
“Vogon Constructor Fleets. Here is what to do if you want to get a
lift from a Vogon: forget it. They are one of the most unpleasant races in
the Galaxy – not actually evil, but bad tempered, bureaucratic, officious
and callous. They wouldn’t even lift a finger to save their own
grandmothers from the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal without orders
signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected
to public inquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat and
recycled as firelighters.
“The best way to get a drink out of a Vogon is to stick your finger
down his throat, and the best way to irritate him is to feed his
grandmother to the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal.
“On no account allow a Vogon to read poetry at you.”
Arthur blinked at it.
“What a strange book. How did we get a lift then?”
“That’s the point, it’s out of date now,” said Ford, sliding the book
back into its cover. “I’m doing the field research for the New Revised
Edition, and one of the things I’ll have to include is a bit about how the
Vogons now employ Dentrassi cooks which gives us a rather useful little
loophole.”
A pained expression crossed Arthur’s face. “But who are the
Dentrassi?” he said.
“Great guys,” said Ford. “They’re the best cooks and the best drink
mixers and they don’t give a wet slap about anything else. And they’ll
always help hitch hikers aboard, partly because they like the company, but
mostly because it annoys the Vogons. Which is exactly the sort of thing
you need to know if you’re an impoverished hitch hiker trying to see the
marvels of the Universe for less than thirty Altairan Dollars a day. And
that’s my job. Fun, isn’t it?”
Arthur looked lost.
“It’s amazing,” he said and frowned at one of the other mattresses.
“Unfortunately I got stuck on the Earth for rather longer than I
intended,” said Ford. “I came for a week and got stuck for fifteen years.”
“But how did you get there in the first place then?”
“Easy, I got a lift with a teaser.”
“A teaser?”
“Yeah.”
“Er, what is…”
“A teaser? Teasers are usually rich kids with nothing to do. They
cruise around looking for planets which haven’t made interstellar contact
yet and buzz them.”
“Buzz them?” Arthur began to feel that Ford was enjoying making life
difficult for him.
“Yeah”, said Ford, “they buzz them. They find some isolated spot with
very few people around, then land right by some poor soul whom no one’s
ever going to believe and then strut up and down in front of him wearing
silly antennae on their heads and making beep beep noises. Rather childish
really.” Ford leant back on the mattress with his hands behind his head
and looked infuriatingly pleased with himself.
“Ford,” insisted Arthur, “I don’t know if this sounds like a silly
question, but what am I doing here?”
“Well you know that,” said Ford. “I rescued you from the Earth.”
“And what’s happened to the Earth?”
“Ah. It’s been demolished.”
“Has it,” said Arthur levelly.
“Yes. It just boiled away into space.”
“Look,” said Arthur, “I’m a bit upset about that.”
Ford frowned to himself and seemed to roll the thought around his
mind.
“Yes, I can understand that,” he said at last.
“Understand that!” shouted Arthur. “Understand that!”
Ford sprang up.
“Keep looking at the book!” he hissed urgently.
“What?”
“Don’t Panic.”
“I’m not panicking!”
“Yes you are.”
“Alright so I’m panicking, what else is there to do?”
“You just come along with me and have a good time. The Galaxy’s a fun
place. You’ll need to have this fish in your ear.”
“I beg your pardon?” asked Arthur, rather politely he thought.
Ford was holding up a small glass jar which quite clearly had a small
yellow fish wriggling around in it. Arthur blinked at him. He wished there
was something simple and recognizable he could grasp hold of. He would
have felt safe if alongside the Dentrassi underwear, the piles of
Squornshellous mattresses and the man from Betelgeuse holding up a small
yellow fish and offering to put it in his ear he had been able to see just
a small packet of corn flakes. He couldn’t, and he didn’t feel safe.
Suddenly a violent noise leapt at them from no source that he could
identify. He gasped in terror at what sounded like a man trying to gargle
whilst fighting off a pack of wolves.
“Shush!” said Ford. “Listen, it might be important.”
“Im… important?”
“It’s the Vogon captain making an announcement on the T’annoy.”
“You mean that’s how the Vogons talk?”
“Listen!”
“But I can’t speak Vogon!”
“You don’t need to. Just put that fish in your ear.”
Ford, with a lightning movement, clapped his hand to Arthur’s ear,
and he had the sudden sickening sensation of the fish slithering deep into
his aural tract. Gasping with horror he scrabbled at his ear for a second
or so, but then slowly turned goggle-eyed with wonder. He was experiencing
the aural equivalent of looking at a picture of two black silhouetted
faces and suddenly seeing it as a picture of a white candlestick. Or of
looking at a lot of coloured dots on a piece of paper which suddenly
resolve themselves into the figure six and mean that your optician is
going to charge you a lot of money for a new pair of glasses.
He was still listening to the howling gargles, he knew that, only now
it had taken on the semblance of perfectly straightforward English.
This is what he heard…

6

“Howl howl gargle howl gargle howl howl howl gargle howl gargle howl
howl gargle gargle howl gargle gargle gargle howl slurrp uuuurgh should
have a good time. Message repeats. This is your captain speaking, so stop
whatever you’re doing and pay attention. First of all I see from our
instruments that we have a couple of hitchhikers aboard. Hello wherever
you are. I just want to make it totally clear that you are not at all
welcome. I worked hard to get where I am today, and I didn’t become
captain of a Vogon constructor ship simply so I could turn it into a taxi
service for a load of degenerate freeloaders. I have sent out a search
party, and as soon that they find you I will put you off the ship. If
you’re very lucky I might read you some of my poetry first.
“Secondly, we are about to jump into hyperspace for the journey to
Barnard’s Star. On arrival we will stay in dock for a seventy-two hour
refit, and no one’s to leave the ship during that time. I repeat, all
planet leave is cancelled. I’ve just had an unhappy love affair, so I
don’t see why anybody else should have a good time. Message ends.”
The noise stopped.
Arthur discovered to his embarrassment that he was lying curled up in
a small ball on the floor with his arms wrapped round his head. He smiled
weakly.
“Charming man,” he said. “I wish I had a daughter so I could forbid
her to marry one…”
“You wouldn’t need to,” said Ford. “They’ve got as much sex appeal as
a road accident. No, don’t move,” he added as Arthur began to uncurl
himself, “you’d better be prepared for the jump into hyperspace. It’s
unpleasantly like being drunk.”
“What’s so unpleasant about being drunk?”
“You ask a glass of water.”
Arthur thought about this.
“Ford,” he said.
“Yeah?”
“What’s this fish doing in my ear?”
“It’s translating for you. It’s a Babel fish. Look it up in the book
if you like.”
He tossed over The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and then curled
himself up into a foetal ball to prepare himself for the jump.
At that moment the bottom fell out of Arthur’s mind.
His eyes turned inside out. His feet began to leak out of the top of
his head.
The room folded flat about him, spun around, shifted out of existence
and left him sliding into his own navel.
They were passing through hyperspace.
“The Babel fish,” said The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy quietly,
“is small, yellow and leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the
Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy not from its carrier but from those
around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this
brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of
its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought
frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of the
brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if
you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything
said to you in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear
decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your
Babel fish.
“Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so
mindboggingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some
thinkers have chosen to see it as the final and clinching proof of the
non-existence of God.
“The argument goes something like this: `I refuse to prove that I
exist,’ says God, `for proof denies faith, and without faith I am
nothing.’
“`But,’ says Man, `The Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn’t it? It
could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore,
by your own arguments, you don’t. QED.’
“`Oh dear,’ says God, `I hadn’t thought of that,’ and promptly
vanished in a puff of logic.
“`Oh, that was easy,’ says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove
that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.
“Most leading theologians claim that this argument is a load of
dingo’s kidneys, but that didn’t stop Oolon Colluphid making a small
fortune when he used it as the central theme of his bestselling book Well
That About Wraps It Up For God.
“Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers
to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and
bloddier wars than anything else in the history of creation.”
Arthur let out a low groan. He was horrified to discover that the
kick through hyperspace hadn’t killed him. He was now six light years from
the place that the Earth would have been if it still existed.
The Earth.
Visions of it swam sickeningly through his nauseated mind. There was
no way his imagination could feel the impact of the whole Earth having
gone, it was too big. He prodded his feelings by thinking that his parents
and his sister had gone. No reaction. He thought of all the people he had
been close to. No reaction. Then he thought of a complete stranger he had
been standing behind in the queue at the supermarket before and felt a
sudden stab – the supermarket was gone, everything in it was gone.
Nelson’s Column had gone! Nelson’s Column had gone and there would be no
outcry, because there was no one left to make an outcry. From now on
Nelson’s Column only existed in his mind. England only existed in his mind
- his mind, stuck here in this dank smelly steel-lined spaceship. A wave
of claustrophobia closed in on him.
England no longer existed. He’d got that – somehow he’d got it. He
tried again. America, he thought, has gone. He couldn’t grasp it. He
decided to start smaller again. New York has gone. No reaction. He’d never
seriously believed it existed anyway. The dollar, he thought, had sunk for
ever. Slight tremor there. Every Bogart movie has been wiped, he said to
himself, and that gave him a nasty knock. McDonalds, he thought. There is
no longer any such thing as a McDonald’s hamburger.
He passed out. When he came round a second later he found he was
sobbing for his mother.
He jerked himself violently to his feet.
“Ford!”
Ford looked up from where he was sitting in a corner humming to
himself. He always found the actual travelling-through-space part of space
travel rather trying.
“Yeah?” he said.
“If you’re a researcher on this book thing and you were on Earth, you
must have been gathering material on it.”
“Well, I was able to extend the original entry a bit, yes.”
“Let me see what it says in this edition then, I’ve got to see it.”
“Yeah OK.” He passed it over again.
Arthur grabbed hold of it and tried to stop his hands shaking. He
pressed the entry for the relevant page. The screen flashed and swirled
and resolved into a page of print. Arthur stared at it.
“It doesn’t have an entry!” he burst out.
Ford looked over his shoulder.
“Yes it does,” he said, “down there, see at the bottom of the screen,
just under Eccentrica Gallumbits, the triple-breasted whore of Eroticon
6.”
Arthur followed Ford’s finger, and saw where it was pointing. For a
moment it still didn’t register, then his mind nearly blew up.
“What? Harmless? Is that all it’s got to say? Harmless! One word!”
Ford shrugged.
“Well, there are a hundred billion stars in the Galaxy, and only a
limited amount of space in the book’s microprocessors,” he said, “and no
one knew much about the Earth of course.”
“Well for God’s sake I hope you managed to rectify that a bit.”
“Oh yes, well I managed to transmit a new entry off to the editor. He
had to trim it a bit, but it’s still an improvement.”
“And what does it say now?” asked Arthur.
“Mostly harmless,” admitted Ford with a slightly embarrassed cough.
“Mostly harmless!” shouted Arthur.
“What was that noise?” hissed Ford.
“It was me shouting,” shouted Arthur.
“No! Shut up!” said Ford. I think we’re in trouble.”
“You think we’re in trouble!”
Outside the door were the sounds of marching feet.
“The Dentrassi?” whispered Arthur.
“No, those are steel tipped boots,” said Ford.
There was a sharp ringing rap on the door.
“Then who is it?” said Arthur.
“Well,” said Ford, “if we’re lucky it’s just the Vogons come to throw
us in to space.”
“And if we’re unlucky?”
“If we’re unlucky,” said Ford grimly, “the captain might be serious
in his threat that he’s going to read us some of his poetry first…”

7

Vogon poetry is of course the third worst in the Universe.
The second worst is that of the Azagoths of Kria. During a recitation
by their Poet Master Grunthos the Flatulent of his poem “Ode To A Small
Lump of Green Putty I Found In My Armpit One Midsummer Morning” four of
his audience died of internal haemorrhaging, and the President of the
Mid-Galactic Arts Nobbling Council survived by gnawing one of his own legs
off. Grunthos is reported to have been “disappointed” by the poem’s
reception, and was about to embark on a reading of his twelvebook epic
entitled My Favourite Bathtime Gurgles when his own major intestine, in a
desperate attempt to save life and civilization, leapt straight up through
his neck and throttled his brain.
The very worst poetry of all perished along with its creator Paula
Nancy Millstone Jennings of Greenbridge, Essex, England in the destruction
of the planet Earth.
Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz smiled very slowly. This was done not so much
for effect as because he was trying to remember the sequence of muscle
movements. He had had a terribly therapeutic yell at his prisoners and was
now feeling quite relaxed and ready for a little callousness.
The prisoners sat in Poetry Appreciation Chairs – strapped in. Vogons
suffered no illusions as to the regard their works were generally held in.
Their early attempts at composition had been part of bludgeoning
insistence that they be accepted as a properly evolved and cultured race,
but now the only thing that kept them going was sheer bloodymindedness.
The sweat stood out cold on Ford Prefect’s brow, and slid round the
electrodes strapped to his temples. These were attached to a battery of
electronic equipment – imagery intensifiers, rhythmic modulators,
alliterative residulators and simile dumpers – all designed to heighten
the experience of the poem and make sure that not a single nuance of the
poet’s thought was lost.
Arthur Dent sat and quivered. He had no idea what he was in for, but
he knew that he hadn’t liked anything that had happened so far and didn’t
think things were likely to change.
The Vogon began to read – a fetid little passage of his own devising.
“Oh frettled gruntbuggly…” he began. Spasms wracked Ford’s body -
this was worse than ever he’d been prepared for.
“… thy micturations are to me | As plurdled gabbleblotchits on a
lurgid bee.”
“Aaaaaaarggggghhhhhh!” went Ford Prefect, wrenching his head back as
lumps of pain thumped through it. He could dimly see beside him Arthur
lolling and rolling in his seat. He clenched his teeth.
“Groop I implore thee,” continued the merciless Vogon, “my foonting
turlingdromes.”
His voice was rising to a horrible pitch of impassioned stridency.
“And hooptiously drangle me with crinkly bindlewurdles, Or I will rend
thee in the gobberwarts with my blurglecruncheon, see if I don’t!”
“Nnnnnnnnnnyyyyyyyuuuuuuurrrrrrrggggggghhhhh!” cried Ford Prefect and
threw one final spasm as the electronic enhancement of the last line
caught him full blast across the temples. He went limp.
Arthur lolled.
“Now Earthlings…” whirred the Vogon (he didn’t know that Ford
Prefect was in fact from a small planet in the vicinity of Betelgeuse, and
wouldn’t have cared if he had) “I present you with a simple choice! Either
die in the vacuum of space, or…” he paused for melodramatic effect,
“tell me how good you thought my poem was!”
He threw himself backwards into a huge leathery bat-shaped seat and
watched them. He did the smile again.
Ford was rasping for breath. He rolled his dusty tongue round his
parched mouth and moaned.
Arthur said brightly: “Actually I quite liked it.”
Ford turned and gaped. Here was an approach that had quite simply not
occurred to him.
The Vogon raised a surprised eyebrow that effectively obscured his
nose and was therefore no bad thing.
“Oh good…” he whirred, in considerable astonishment.
“Oh yes,” said Arthur, “I thought that some of the metaphysical
imagery was really particularly effective.”
Ford continued to stare at him, slowly organizing his thoughts around
this totally new concept. Were they really going to be able to bareface
their way out of this?
“Yes, do continue…” invited the Vogon.
“Oh… and er… interesting rhythmic devices too,” continued Arthur,
“which seemed to counterpoint the… er… er…” He floundered.
Ford leaped to his rescue, hazarding “counterpoint the surrealism of
the underlying metaphor of the… er…” He floundered too, but Arthur was
ready again.
“… humanity of the…”
“Vogonity,” Ford hissed at him.
“Ah yes, Vogonity (sorry) of the poet’s compassionate soul,” Arthur
felt he was on a home stretch now, “which contrives through the medium of
the verse structure to sublimate this, transcend that, and come to terms
with the fundamental dichotomies of the other,” (he was reaching a
triumphant crescendo…) “and one is left with a profound and vivid
insight into… into… er…” (… which suddenly gave out on him.) Ford
leaped in with the coup de gr@ce:
“Into whatever it was the poem was about!” he yelled. Out of the
corner of his mouth: “Well done, Arthur, that was very good.”
The Vogon perused them. For a moment his embittered racial soul had
been touched, but he thought no – too little too late. His voice took on
the quality of a cat snagging brushed nylon.
“So what you’re saying is that I write poetry because underneath my
mean callous heartless exterior I really just want to be loved,” he said.
He paused. “Is that right?”
Ford laughed a nervous laugh. “Well I mean yes,” he said, “don’t we
all, deep down, you know… er…”
The Vogon stood up.
“No, well you’re completely wrong,” he said, “I just write poetry to
throw my mean callous heartless exterior into sharp relief. I’m going to
throw you off the ship anyway. Guard! Take the prisoners to number three
airlock and throw them out!”
“What?” shouted Ford.
A huge young Vogon guard stepped forward and yanked them out of their
straps with his huge blubbery arms.
“You can’t throw us into space,” yelled Ford, “we’re trying to write
a book.”
“Resistance is useless!” shouted the Vogon guard back at him. It was
the first phrase he’d learnt when he joined the Vogon Guard Corps.
The captain watched with detached amusement and then turned away.
Arthur stared round him wildly.
“I don’t want to die now!” he yelled. “I’ve still got a headache! I
don’t want to go to heaven with a headache, I’d be all cross and wouldn’t
enjoy it!”
The guard grasped them both firmly round the neck, and bowing
deferentially towards his captain’s back, hoiked them both protesting out
of the bridge. A steel door closed and the captain was on his own again.
He hummed quietly and mused to himself, lightly fingering his notebook of
verses.
“Hmmmm,” he said, “counterpoint the surrealism of the underlying
metaphor…” He considered this for a moment, and then closed the book
with a grim smile.
“Death’s too good for them,” he said.
The long steel-lined corridor echoed to the feeble struggles of the
two humanoids clamped firmly under rubbery Vogon armpits.
“This is great,” spluttered Arthur, “this is really terrific. Let go
of me you brute!”
The Vogon guard dragged them on.
“Don’t you worry,” said Ford, “I’ll think of something.” He didn’t
sound hopeful.
“Resistance is useless!” bellowed the guard.
“Just don’t say things like that,” stammered Ford. “How can anyone
maintain a positive mental attitude if you’re saying things like that?”
“My God,” complained Arthur, “you’re talking about a positive mental
attitude and you haven’t even had your planet demolished today. I woke up
this morning and thought I’d have a nice relaxed day, do a bit of reading,
brush the dog… It’s now just after four in the afternoon and I’m already
thrown out of an alien spaceship six light years from the smoking remains
of the Earth!” He spluttered and gurgled as the Vogon tightened his grip.
“Alright,” said Ford, “just stop panicking.”
“Who said anything about panicking?” snapped Arthur. “This is still
just the culture shock. You wait till I’ve settled down into the situation
and found my bearings. Then I’ll start panicking.”
“Arthur you’re getting hysterical. Shut up!” Ford tried desperately
to think, but was interrupted by the guard shouting again.
“Resistance is useless!”
“And you can shut up as well!” snapped Ford.
“Resistance is useless!”
“Oh give it a rest,” said Ford. He twisted his head till he was
looking straight up into his captor’s face. A thought struck him.
“Do you really enjoy this sort of thing?” he asked suddenly.
The Vogon stopped dead and a look of immense stupidity seeped slowly
over his face.
“Enjoy?” he boomed. “What do you mean?”
“What I mean,” said Ford, “is does it give you a full satisfying
life? Stomping around, shouting, pushing people out of spaceships…”
The Vogon stared up at the low steel ceiling and his eyebrows almost
rolled over each other. His mouth slacked. Finally he said, “Well the
hours are good…”
“They’d have to be,” agreed Ford.
Arthur twisted his head to look at Ford.
“Ford, what are you doing?” he asked in an amazed whisper.
“Oh, just trying to take an interest in the world around me, OK?” he
said. “So the hours are pretty good then?” he resumed.
The Vogon stared down at him as sluggish thoughts moiled around in
the murky depths.
“Yeah,” he said, “but now you come to mention it, most of the actual
minutes are pretty lousy. Except…” he thought again, which required
looking at the ceiling – “except some of the shouting I quite like.” He
filled his lungs and bellowed, “Resistance is…”
“Sure, yes,” interrupted Ford hurriedly, “you’re good at that, I can
tell. But if it’s mostly lousy,” he said, slowly giving the words time to
reach their mark, “then why do you do it? What is it? The girls? The
leather? The machismo? Or do you just find that coming to terms with the
mindless tedium of it all presents an interesting challenge?”
“Er…” said the guard, “er… er… I dunno. I think I just sort
of… do it really. My aunt said that spaceship guard was a good career
for a young Vogon – you know, the uniform, the lowslung stun ray holster,
the mindless tedium…”
“There you are Arthur,” said Ford with the air of someone reaching
the conclusion of his argument, “you think you’ve got problems.”
Arthur rather thought he had. Apart from the unpleasant business with
his home planet the Vogon guard had half-throttled him already and he
didn’t like the sound of being thrown into space very much.
“Try and understand his problem,” insisted Ford. “Here he is poor
lad, his entire life’s work is stamping around, throwing people off
spaceships…”
“And shouting,” added the guard.
“And shouting, sure,” said Ford patting the blubbery arm clamped
round his neck in friendly condescension, “… and he doesn’t even know
why he’s doing it!”
Arthur agreed this was very sad. He did this with a small feeble
gesture, because he was too asphyxicated to speak.
Deep rumblings of bemusement came from the guard.
“Well. Now you put it like that I suppose…”
“Good lad!” encouraged Ford.
“But alright,” went on the rumblings, “so what’s the alternative?”
“Well,” said Ford, brightly but slowly, “stop doing it of course!
Tell them,” he went on, “you’re not going to do it anymore.” He felt he
had to add something to that, but for the moment the guard seemed to have
his mind occupied pondering that much.
“Eerrrrrrmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm…” said the guard, “erm, well that
doesn’t sound that great to me.”
Ford suddenly felt the moment slipping away.
“Now wait a minute,” he said, “that’s just the start you see, there’s
more to it than that you see…”
But at that moment the guard renewed his grip and continued his
original purpose of lugging his prisoners to the airlock. He was obviously
quite touched.
“No, I think if it’s all the same to you,” he said, “I’d better get
you both shoved into this airlock and then go and get on with some other
bits of shouting I’ve got to do.”
It wasn’t all the same to Ford Prefect after all.
“Come on now… but look!” he said, less slowly, less brightly.
“Huhhhhgggggggnnnnnnn…” said Arthur without any clear inflection.
“But hang on,” pursued Ford, “there’s music and art and things to
tell you about yet! Arrrggghhh!”
“Resistance is useless,” bellowed the guard, and then added, “You see
if I keep it up I can eventually get promoted to Senior Shouting Officer,
and there aren’t usually many vacancies for non-shouting and
non-pushing-people-about officers, so I think I’d better stick to what I
know.”
They had now reached the airlock – a large circular steel hatchway of
massive strength and weight let into the inner skin of the craft. The
guard operated a control and the hatchway swung smoothly open.
“But thanks for taking an interest,” said the Vogon guard. “Bye now.”
He flung Ford and Arthur through the hatchway into the small chamber
within. Arthur lay panting for breath. Ford scrambled round and flung his
shoulder uselessly against the reclosing hatchway.
“But listen,” he shouted to the guard, “there’s a whole world you
don’t know anything about… here how about this?” Desperately he grabbed
for the only bit of culture he knew offhand – he hummed the first bar of
Beethoven’s Fifth.
“Da da da dum! Doesn’t that stir anything in you?”
“No,” said the guard, “not really. But I’ll mention it to my aunt.”
If he said anything further after that it was lost. The hatchway
sealed itself tight, and all sound was lost but the faint distant hum of
the ship’s engines.
They were in a brightly polished cylindrical chamber about six feet
in diameter and ten feet long.
“Potentially bright lad I thought,” he said and slumped against the
curved wall.
Arthur was still lying in the curve of the floor where he had fallen.
He didn’t look up. He just lay panting.
“We’re trapped now aren’t we?”
“Yes,” said Ford, “we’re trapped.”
“Well didn’t you think of anything? I thought you said you were going
to think of something. Perhaps you thought of something and didn’t
notice.”
“Oh yes, I thought of something,” panted Ford. Arthur looked up
expectantly.
“But unfortunately,” continued Ford, “it rather involved being on the
other side of this airtight hatchway.” He kicked the hatch they’d just
been through.
“But it was a good idea was it?”
“Oh yes, very neat.”
“What was it?”
“Well I hadn’t worked out the details yet. Not much point now is
there?”
“So… er, what happens next?”
“Oh, er, well the hatchway in front of us will open automatically in
a few moments and we will shoot out into deep space I expect and
asphyxicate. If you take a lungful of air with you you can last for up to
thirty seconds of course…” said Ford. He stuck his hands behind his
back, raised his eyebrows and started to hum an old Betelgeusian battle
hymn. To Arthur’s eyes he suddenly looked very alien.
“So this is it,” said Arthur, “we’re going to die.”
“Yes,” said Ford, “except… no! Wait a minute!” he suddenly lunged
across the chamber at something behind Arthur’s line of vision. “What’s
this switch?” he cried.
“What? Where?” cried Arthur twisting round.
“No, I was only fooling,” said Ford, “we are going to die after all.”
He slumped against the wall again and carried on the tune from where
he left off.
“You know,” said Arthur, “it’s at times like this, when I’m trapped
in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and about to die of
asphyxication in deep space that I really wish I’d listened to what my
mother told me when I was young.”
“Why, what did she tell you?”
“I don’t know, I didn’t listen.”
“Oh.” Ford carried on humming.
“This is terrific,” Arthur thought to himself, “Nelson’s Column has
gone, McDonald’s have gone, all that’s left is me and the words Mostly
Harmless. Any second now all that will be left is Mostly Harmless. And
yesterday the planet seemed to be going so well.”
A motor whirred.
A slight hiss built into a deafening roar of rushing air as the outer
hatchway opened on to an empty blackness studded with tiny impossibly
bright points of light. Ford and Arthur popped into outer space like corks
from a toy gun.

8

The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is a wholly remarkable book. It
has been compiled and recompiled many times over many years and under many
different editorships. It contains contributions from countless numbers of
travellers and researchers.
The introduction begins like this:
“Space,” it says, “is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how
vastly hugely mindboggingly big it is. I mean you may think it’s a long
way down the road to the chemist, but that’s just peanuts to space.
Listen…” and so on.
(After a while the style settles down a bit and it begins to tell you
things you really need to know, like the fact that the fabulously
beautiful planet Bethselamin is now so worried about the cumulative
erosion by ten billion visiting tourists a year that any net imbalance
between the amount you eat and the amount you excrete whilst on the planet
is surgically removed from your bodyweight when you leave: so every time
you go to the lavatory it is vitally important to get a receipt.)
To be fair though, when confronted by the sheer enormity of distances
between the stars, better minds than the one responsible for the Guide’s
introduction have faltered. Some invite you to consider for a moment a
peanut in reading and a small walnut in Johannesburg, and other such
dizzying concepts.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the
human imagination.
Even light, which travels so fast that it takes most races thousands
of years to realize that it travels at all, takes time to journey between
the stars. It takes eight minutes from the star Sol to the place where the
Earth used to be, and four years more to arrive at Sol’s nearest stellar
neighbour, Alpha Proxima.
For light to reach the other side of the Galaxy, for it to reach
Damogran for instance, takes rather longer: five hundred thousand years.
The record for hitch hiking this distance is just under five years,
but you don’t get to see much on the way.
The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy says that if you hold a lungful
of air you can survive in the total vacuum of space for about thirty
seconds. However it goes on to say that what with space being the mind
boggling size it is the chances of getting picked up by another ship
within those thirty seconds are two to the power of two hundred and
sixty-seven thousand seven hundred and nine to one against.
By a totally staggering coincidence that is also the telephone number
of an Islington flat where Arthur once went to a very good party and met a
very nice girl whom he totally failed to get off with – she went off with
a gatecrasher.
Though the planet Earth, the Islington flat and the telephone have
all now been demolished, it is comforting to reflect that they are all in
some small way commemorated by the fact that twenty-nine seconds later
Ford and Arthur were rescued.

9

A computer chatted to itself in alarm as it noticed an airlock open
and close itself for no apparent reason.
This was because Reason was in fact out to lunch.
A hole had just appeared in the Galaxy. It was exactly a nothingth of
a second long, a nothingth of an inch wide, and quite a lot of million
light years from end to end.
As it closed up lots of paper hats and party balloons fell out of it
and drifted off through the universe. A team of seven threefoot-high
market analysts fell out of it and died, partly of asphyxication, partly
of surprise.
Two hundred and thirty-nine thousand lightly fried eggs fell out of
it too, materializing in a large woobly heap on the faminestruck land of
Poghril in the Pansel system.
The whole Poghril tribe had died out from famine except for one last
man who died of cholesterol poisoning some weeks later.
The nothingth of a second for which the hole existed reverberated
backwards and forwards through time in a most improbable fashion.
Somewhere in the deeply remote past it seriously traumatized a small
random group of atoms drifting through the empty sterility of space and
made them cling together in the most extraordinarily unlikely patterns.
These patterns quickly learnt to copy themselves (this was part of what
was so extraordinary of the patterns) and went on to cause massive trouble
on every planet they drifted on to. That was how life began in the
Universe.
Five wild Event Maelstroms swirled in vicious storms of unreason and
spewed up a pavement.
On the pavement lay Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent gulping like
half-spent fish.
“There you are,” gasped Ford, scrabbling for a fingerhold on the
pavement as it raced through the Third Reach of the Unknown, “I told you
I’d think of something.”
“Oh sure,” said Arthur, “sure.”
“Bright idea of mine,” said Ford, “to find a passing spaceship and
get rescued by it.”
The real universe arched sickeningly away beneath them. Various
pretend ones flitted silently by, like mountain goats. Primal light
exploded, splattering space-time as with gobbets of junket. Time
blossomed, matter shrank away. The highest prime number coalesced quietly
in a corner and hid itself away for ever.
“Oh come off it,” said Arthur, “the chances against it were
astronomical.”
“Don’t knock it, it worked,” said Ford.
“What sort of ship are we in?” asked Arthur as the pit of eternity
yawned beneath them.
“I don’t know,” said Ford, “I haven’t opened my eyes yet.”
“No, nor have I,” said Arthur.
The Universe jumped, froze, quivered and splayed out in several
unexpected directions.
Arthur and Ford opened their eyes and looked about in considerable
surprise.
“Good god,” said Arthur, “it looks just like the sea front at
Southend.”
“Hell, I’m relieved to hear you say that,” said Ford.
“Why?”
“Because I thought I must be going mad.”
“Perhaps you are. Perhaps you only thought I said it.”
Ford thought about this.
“Well, did you say it or didn’t you?” he asked.
“I think so,” said Arthur.
“Well, perhaps we’re both going mad.”
“Yes,” said Arthur, “we’d be mad, all things considered, to think
this was Southend.”
“Well, do you think this is Southend?”
“Oh yes.”
“So do I.”
“Therefore we must be mad.”
“Nice day for it.”
“Yes,” said a passing maniac.
“Who was that?” asked Arthur
“Who – the man with the five heads and the elderberry bush full of
kippers?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know. Just someone.”
“Ah.”
They both sat on the pavement and watched with a certain unease as
huge children bounced heavily along the sand and wild horses thundered
through the sky taking fresh supplies of reinforced railings to the
Uncertain Areas.
“You know,” said Arthur with a slight cough, “if this is Southend,
there’s something very odd about it…”
“You mean the way the sea stays steady and the buildings keep washing
up and down?” said Ford. “Yes I thought that was odd too. In fact,” he
continued as with a huge bang Southend split itself into six equal
segments which danced and span giddily round each other in lewd and
licentious formation, “there is something altogether very strange going
on.”
Wild yowling noises of pipes and strings seared through the wind, hot
doughnuts popped out of the road for ten pence each, horrid fish stormed
out of the sky and Arthur and Ford decided to make a run for it.
They plunged through heavy walls of sound, mountains of archaic
thought, valleys of mood music, bad shoe sessions and footling bats and
suddenly heard a girl’s voice.
It sounded quite a sensible voice, but it just said, “Two to the
power of one hundred thousand to one against and falling,” and that was
all.
Ford skidded down a beam of light and span round trying to find a
source for the voice but could see nothing he could seriously believe in.
“What was that voice?” shouted Arthur.
“I don’t know,” yelled Ford, “I don’t know. It sounded like a
measurement of probability.”
“Probability? What do you mean?”
“Probability. You know, like two to one, three to one, five to four
against. It said two to the power of one hundred thousand to one against.
That’s pretty improbable you know.”
A million-gallon vat of custard upended itself over them without
warning.
“But what does it mean?” cried Arthur.
“What, the custard?”
“No, the measurement of probability!”
“I don’t know. I don’t know at all. I think we’re on some kind of
spaceship.”
“I can only assume,” said Arthur, “that this is not the firstclass
compartment.”
Bulges appeared in the fabric of space-time. Great ugly bulges.
“Haaaauuurrgghhh…” said Arthur as he felt his body softening and
bending in unusual directions. “Southend seems to be melting away… the
stars are swirling… a dustbowl… my legs are drifting off into the
sunset… my left arm’s come off too.” A frightening thought struck him:
“Hell,” he said, “how am I going to operate my digital watch now?” He
wound his eyes desperately around in Ford’s direction.
“Ford,” he said, “you’re turning into a penguin. Stop it.”
Again came the voice.
“Two to the power of seventy-five thousand to one against and
falling.”
Ford waddled around his pond in a furious circle.
“Hey, who are you,” he quacked. “Where are you? What’s going on and
is there any way of stopping it?”
“Please relax,” said the voice pleasantly, like a stewardess in an
airliner with only one wing and two engines one of which is on fire, “you
are perfectly safe.”
“But that’s not the point!” raged Ford. “The point is that I am now a
perfectly save penguin, and my colleague here is rapidly running out of
limbs!”
“It’s alright, I’ve got them back now,” said Arthur.
“Two to the power of fifty thousand to one against and falling,” said
the voice.
“Admittedly,” said Arthur, “they’re longer than I usually like them,
but…”
“Isn’t there anything,” squawked Ford in avian fury, “you feel you
ought to be telling us?”
The voice cleared its throat. A giant petit four lolloped off into
the distance.
“Welcome,” the voice said, “to the Starship Heart of Gold.”
The voice continued.
“Please do not be alarmed,” it said, “by anything you see or hear
around you. You are bound to feel some initial ill effects as you have
been rescued from certain death at an improbability level of two to the
power of two hundred and seventy-six thousand to one against – possibly
much higher. We are now cruising at a level of two to the power of
twenty-five thousand to one against and falling, and we will be restoring
normality just as soon as we are sure what is normal anyway. Thank you.
Two to the power of twenty thousand to one against and falling.”
The voice cut out.
Ford and Arthur were in a small luminous pink cubicle.
Ford was wildly excited.
“Arthur!” he said, “this is fantastic! We’ve been picked up by a ship
powered by the Infinite Improbability Drive! This is incredible! I heard
rumors about it before! They were all officially denied, but they must
have done it! They’ve built the Improbability Drive! Arthur, this is…
Arthur? What’s happening?”
Arthur had jammed himself against the door to the cubicle, trying to
hold it closed, but it was ill fitting. Tiny furry little hands were
squeezing themselves through the cracks, their fingers were inkstained;
tiny voices chattered insanely.
Arthur looked up.
“Ford!” he said, “there’s an infinite number of monkeys outside who
want to talk to us about this script for Hamlet they’ve worked out.”

10

The Infinite Improbability Drive is a wonderful new method of
crossing vast interstellar distances in a mere nothingth of a second,
without all that tedious mucking about in hyperspace.
It was discovered by a lucky chance, and then developed into a
governable form of propulsion by the Galactic Government’s research team
on Damogran.
This, briefly, is the story of its discovery.
The principle of generating small amounts of finite improbability by
simply hooking the logic circuits of a Bambleweeny 57 SubMeson Brain to an
atomic vector plotter suspended in a strong Brownian Motion producer (say
a nice hot cup of tea) were of course well understood – and such
generators were often used to break the ice at parties by making all the
molecules in the hostess’s undergarments leap simultaneously one foot to
the left, in accordance with the Theory of Indeterminacy.
Many respectable physicists said that they weren’t going to stand for
this – partly because it was a debasement of science, but mostly because
they didn’t get invited to those sort of parties.
Another thing they couldn’t stand was the perpetual failure they
encountered in trying to construct a machine which could generate the
infinite improbability field needed to flip a spaceship across the
mind-paralysing distances between the furthest stars, and in the end they
grumpily announced that such a machine was virtually impossible.
Then, one day, a student who had been left to sweep up the lab after
a particularly unsuccessful party found himself reasoning this way:
If, he thought to himself, such a machine is a virtual impossibility,
then it must logically be a finite improbability. So all I have to do in
order to make one is to work out exactly how improbable it is, feed that
figure into the finite improbability generator, give it a fresh cup of
really hot tea… and turn it on!
He did this, and was rather startled to discover that he had managed
to create the long sought after golden Infinite Improbability generator
out of thin air.
It startled him even more when just after he was awarded the Galactic
Institute’s Prize for Extreme Cleverness he got lynched by a rampaging mob
of respectable physicists who had finally realized that the one thing they
really couldn’t stand was a smartass.

11

The Improbability-proof control cabin of the Heart of Gold looked
like a perfectly conventional spaceship except that it was perfectly clean
because it was so new. Some of the control seats hadn’t had the plastic
wrapping taken off yet. The cabin was mostly white, oblong, and about the
size of a smallish restaurant. In fact it wasn’t perfectly oblong: the two
long walls were raked round in a slight parallel curve, and all the angles
and corners were contoured in excitingly chunky shapes. The truth of the
matter is that it would have been a great deal simpler and more practical
to build the cabin as an ordinary three-dimensional oblong rom, but then
the designers would have got miserable. As it was the cabin looked
excitingly purposeful, with large video screens ranged over the control
and guidance system panels on the concave wall, and long banks of
computers set into the convex wall. In one corner a robot sat humped, its
gleaming brushed steel head hanging loosely between its gleaming brushed
steel knees. It too was fairly new, but though it was beautifully
constructed and polished it somehow looked as if the various parts of its
more or less humanoid body didn’t quite fit properly. In fact they fitted
perfectly well, but something in its bearing suggested that they might
have fitted better.
Zaphod Beeblebrox paced nervously up and down the cabin, brushing his
hands over pieces of gleaming equipment and giggling with excitement.
Trillian sat hunched over a clump of instruments reading off figures.
Her voice was carried round the Tannoy system of the whole ship.
“Five to one against and falling…” she said, “four to one against
and falling… three to one… two… one… probability factor of one to
one… we have normality, I repeat we have normality.” She turned her
microphone off – then turned it back on, with a slight smile and
continued: “Anything you still can’t cope with is therefore your own
problem. Please relax. You will be sent for soon.”
Zaphod burst out in annoyance: “Who are they Trillian?”
Trillian span her seat round to face him and shrugged.
“Just a couple of guys we seem to have picked up in open space,” she
said. “Section ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha.”
“Yeah, well that’s a very sweet thought Trillian,” complained Zaphod,
“but do you really think it’s wise under the circumstances? I mean, here
we are on the run and everything, we must have the police of half the
Galaxy after us by now, and we stop to pick up hitch hikers. OK, so ten
out of ten for style, but minus several million for good thinking, yeah?”
He tapped irritably at a control panel. Trillian quietly moved his
hand before he tapped anything important. Whatever Zaphod’s qualities of
mind might include – dash, bravado, conceit – he was mechanically inept
and could easily blow the ship up with an extravagant gesture. Trillian
had come to suspect that the main reason why he had had such a wild and
successful life that he never really understood the significance of
anything he did.
“Zaphod,” she said patiently, “they were floating unprotected in open
space… you wouldn’t want them to have died would you?”
“Well, you know… no. Not as such, but…”
“Not as such? Not die as such? But?” Trillian cocked her head on one
side.
“Well, maybe someone else might have picked them up later.”
“A second later and they would have been dead.”
“Yeah, so if you’d taken the trouble to think about the problem a bit
longer it would have gone away.”
“You’d been happy to let them die?”
“Well, you know, not happy as such, but…”
“Anyway,” said Trillian, turning back to the controls, “I didn’t pick
them up.”
“What do you mean? Who picked them up then?”
“The ship did.”
“Huh?”
“The ship did. All by itself.”
“Huh?”
“Whilst we were in Improbability Drive.”
“But that’s incredible.”
“No Zaphod. Just very very improbable.”
“Er, yeah.”
“Look Zaphod,” she said, patting his arm, “don’t worry about the
aliens. They’re just a couple of guys I expect. I’ll send the robot down
to get them and bring them up here. Hey Marvin!”
In the corner, the robot’s head swung up sharply, but then wobbled
about imperceptibly. It pulled itself up to its feet as if it was about
five pounds heavier that it actually was, and made what an outside
observer would have thought was a heroic effort to cross the room. It
stopped in front of Trillian and seemed to stare through her left
shoulder.
“I think you ought to know I’m feeling very depressed,” it said. Its
voice was low and hopeless.
“Oh God,” muttered Zaphod and slumped into a seat.
“Well,” said Trillian in a bright compassionate tone, “here’s
something to occupy you and keep your mind off things.”
“It won’t work,” droned Marvin, “I have an exceptionally large mind.”
“Marvin!” warned Trillian.
“Alright,” said Marvin, “what do you want me to do?”
“Go down to number two entry bay and bring the two aliens up here
under surveillance.”
With a microsecond pause, and a finely calculated micromodulation of
pitch and timbre – nothing you could actually take offence at – Marvin
managed to convey his utter contempt and horror of all things human.
“Just that?” he said.
“Yes,” said Trillian firmly.
“I won’t enjoy it,” said Marvin.
Zaphod leaped out of his seat.
“She’s not asking you to enjoy it,” he shouted, “just do it will
you?”
“Alright,” said Marvin like the tolling of a great cracked bell,
“I’ll do it.”
“Good…” snapped Zaphod, “great… thank you…”
Marvin turned and lifted his flat-topped triangular red eyes up
towards him.
“I’m not getting you down at all am I?” he said pathetically.
“No no Marvin,” lilted Trillian, “that’s just fine, really…”
“I wouldn’t like to think that I was getting you down.”
“No, don’t worry about that,” the lilt continued, “you just act as
comes naturally and everything will be just fine.”
“You’re sure you don’t mind?” probed Marvin.
“No no Marvin,” lilted Trillian, “that’s just fine, really… just
part of life.”
“Marvin flashed him an electronic look.
“Life,” said Marvin, “don’t talk to me about life.”
He turned hopelessly on his heel and lugged himself out of the cabin.
With a satisfied hum and a click the door closed behind him
“I don’t think I can stand that robot much longer Zaphod,” growled
Trillian.
The Encyclopaedia Galactica defines a robot as a mechanical apparatus
designed to do the work of a man. The marketing division of the Sirius
Cybernetics Corporation defines a robot as “Your Plastic Pal Who’s Fun To
Be With.”
The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy defines the marketing division
of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation as “a bunch of mindless jerks who’ll
be the first against the wall when the revolution comes,” with a footnote
to the effect that the editors would welcome applications from anyone
interested in taking over the post of robotics correspondent.
Curiously enough, an edition of the Encyclopaedia Galactica that had
the good fortune to fall through a time warp from a thousand years in the
future defined the marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics
Corporation as “a bunch of mindless jerks who were the first against the
wall when the revolution came.”
The pink cubicle had winked out of existence, the monkeys had sunk
away to a better dimension. Ford and Arthur found themselves in the
embarkation area of the ship. It was rather smart.
“I think the ship’s brand new,” said Ford.
“How can you tell?” asked Arthur. “Have you got some exotic device
for measuring the age of metal?”
“No, I just found this sales brochure lying on the floor. It’s a lot
of `the Universe can be yours’ stuff. Ah! Look, I was right.”
Ford jabbed at one of the pages and showed it to Arthur.
“It says: Sensational new breakthrough in Improbability Physics. As
soon as the ship’s drive reaches Infinite Improbability it passes through
every point in the Universe. Be the envy of other major governments. Wow,
this is big league stuff.”
Ford hunted excitedly through the technical specs of the ship,
occasionally gasping with astonishment at what he read – clearly Galactic
astrotechnology had moved ahead during the years of his exile.
Arthur listened for a short while, but being unable to understand the
vast majority of what Ford was saying he began to let his mind wander,
trailing his fingers along the edge of an incomprehensible computer bank,
he reached out and pressed an invitingly large red button on a nearby
panel. The panel lit up with the words Please do not press this button
again. He shook himself.
“Listen,” said Ford, who was still engrossed in the sales brochure,
“they make a big thing of the ship’s cybernetics. A new generation of
Sirius Cybernetics Corporation robots and computers, with the new GPP
feature.”
“GPP feature?” said Arthur. “What’s that?”
“Oh, it says Genuine People Personalities.”
“Oh,” said Arthur, “sounds ghastly.”
A voice behind them said, “It is.” The voice was low and hopeless and
accompanied by a slight clanking sound. They span round and saw an abject
steel man standing hunched in the doorway.
“What?” they said.
“Ghastly,” continued Marvin, “it all is. Absolutely ghastly. Just
don’t even talk about it. Look at this door,” he said, stepping through
it. The irony circuits cut into his voice modulator as he mimicked the
style of the sales brochure. “All the doors in this spaceship have a
cheerful and sunny disposition. It is their pleasure to open for you, and
their satisfaction to close again with the knowledge of a job well done.”
As the door closed behind them it became apparent that it did indeed
have a satisfied sigh-like quality to it. “Hummmmmmmyummmmmmm ah!” it
said.
Marvin regarded it with cold loathing whilst his logic circuits
chattered with disgust and tinkered with the concept of directing physical
violence against it Further circuits cut in saying, Why bother? What’s the
point? Nothing is worth getting involved in. Further circuits amused
themselves by analysing the molecular components of the door, and of the
humanoids’ brain cells. For a quick encore they measured the level of
hydrogen emissions in the surrounding cubic parsec of space and then shut
down again in boredom. A spasm of despair shook the robot’s body as he
turned.
“Come on,” he droned, “I’ve been ordered to take you down to the
bridge. Here I am, brain the size of a planet and they ask me to take you
down to the bridge. Call that job satisfaction? ‘Cos I don’t.”
He turned and walked back to the hated door.
“Er, excuse me,” said Ford following after him, “which government
owns this ship?”
Marvin ignored him.
“You watch this door,” he muttered, “it’s about to open again. I can
tell by the intolerable air of smugness it suddenly generates.”
With an ingratiating little whine the door slit open again and Marvin
stomped through.
“Come on,” he said.
The others followed quickly and the door slit back into place with
pleased little clicks and whirrs.
“Thank you the marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics
Corporation,” said Marvin and trudged desolately up the gleaming curved
corridor that stretched out before them. “Let’s build robots with Genuine
People Personalities,” they said. So they tried it out with me. I’m a
personality prototype. You can tell can’t you?”
Ford and Arthur muttered embarrassed little disclaimers.
“I hate that door,” continued Marvin. “I’m not getting you down at
all am I?”
“Which government…” started Ford again.
“No government owns it,” snapped the robot, “it’s been stolen.”
“Stolen?”
“Stolen?” mimicked Marvin.
“Who by?” asked Ford.
“Zaphod Beeblebrox.”
Something extraordinary happened to Ford’s face. At least five
entirely separate and distinct expressions of shock and amazement piled up
on it in a jumbled mess. His left leg, which was in mid stride, seemed to
have difficulty in finding the floor again. He stared at the robot and
tried to entangle some dartoid muscles.
“Zaphod Beeblebrox?..” he said weakly.
“Sorry, did I say something wrong?” said Marvin, dragging himself on
regardless. “Pardon me for breathing, which I never do anyway so I don’t
know why I bother to say it, oh God I’m so depressed. Here’s another of
those self-satisfied door. Life! Don’t talk to me about life.”
“No one ever mentioned it,” muttered Arthur irritably. “Ford, are you
alright?”
Ford stared at him. “Did that robot say Zaphod Beeblebrox?” he said.

12

A loud clatter of gunk music flooded through the Heart of Gold cabin
as Zaphod searched the sub-etha radio wavebands for news of himself. The
machine was rather difficult to operate. For years radios had been
operated by means of pressing buttons and turning dials; then as the
technology became more sophisticated the controls were made
touch-sensitive – you merely had to brush the panels with your fingers;
now all you had to do was wave your hand in the general direction of the
components and hope. It saved a lot of muscular expenditure of course, but
meant that you had to sit infuriatingly still if you wanted to keep
listening to the same programme.
Zaphod waved a hand and the channel switched again. More gunk music,
but this time it was a background to a news announcement. The news was
always heavily edited to fit the rhythms of the music.
“… and news brought to you here on the sub-etha wave band,
broadcasting around the galaxy around the clock,” squawked a voice, “and
we’ll be saying a big hello to all intelligent life forms everywhere…
and to everyone else out there, the secret is to bang the rocks together,
guys. And of course, the big news story tonight is the sensational theft
of the new Improbability Drive prototype ship by none other than Galactic
President Zaphod Beeblebrox. And the question everyone’s asking is… has
the big Z finally flipped? Beeblebrox, the man who invented the Pan
Galactic Gargle Blaster, ex-confidence trickster, once described by
Eccentrica Gallumbits as the Best Bang since the Big One, and recently
voted the Wort Dressed Sentinent Being in the Known Universe for the
seventh time… has he got an answer this time? We asked his private brain
care specialist Gag Halfrunt…” The music swirled and dived for a moment.
Another voice broke in, presumably Halfrunt. He said: “Vell, Zaphod’s jist
zis guy you know?” but got no further because an electric pencil flew
across the cabin and through the radio’s on/off sensitive airspace. Zaphod
turned and glared at Trillian – she had thrown the pencil.
“Hey,” he said, what do you do that for?”
Trillian was tapping her fingers on a screenful of figures.
“I’ve just thought of something,” she said.
“Yeah? Worth interrupting a news bulletin about me for?”
“You hear enough about yourself as it is.”
“I’m very insecure. We know that.”
“Can we drop your ego for a moment? This is important.”
“If there’s anything more important than my ego around, I want it
caught and shot now.” Zaphod glared at her again, then laughed.
“Listen,” she said, “we picked up those couple of guys…”
“What couple of guys?”
“The couple of guys we picked up.”
“Oh, yeah,” said Zaphod, “those couple of guys.”
“We picked them up in sector ZZ 9 Plural Z Alpha.”
“Yeah?” said Zaphod and blinked.
Trillian said quietly, “Does that mean anything to you?”
“Mmmmm,” said Zaphod, “ZZ 9 Plural Z Alpha. ZZ 9 Plural Z Alpha?”
“Well?” said Trillian.
“Er… what does the Z mean?” said Zaphod.
“Which one?”
“Any one.”
One of the major difficulties Trillian experienced in her
relationship with Zaphod was learning to distinguish between him
pretending to be stupid just to get people off their guard, pretending to
be stupid because he couldn’t be bothered to think and wanted someone else
to do it for him, pretending to be outrageously stupid to hide the fact
that he actually didn’t understand what was going on, and really being
genuinely stupid. He was renowned for being amazingly clever and quite
clearly was so – but not all the time, which obviously worried him, hence
the act. He proffered people to be puzzled rather than contemptuous. This
above all appeared to Trillian to be genuinely stupid, but she could no
longer be bothered to argue about it.
She sighed and punched up a star map on the visiscreen so she could
make it simple for him, whatever his reasons for wanting it to be that
way.
“There,” she pointed, “right there.”
“Hey… Yeah!” said Zaphod.
“Well?” she said.
“Well what?”
Parts of the inside of her head screamed at other parts of the inside
of her head. She said, very calmly, “It’s the same sector you originally
picked me up in.”
He looked at her and then looked back at the screen.
“Hey, yeah,” he said, “now that is wild. We should have zapped
straight into the middle of the Horsehead Nebula. How did we come to be
there? I mean that’s nowhere.”
She ignored this.
“Improbability Drive,” she said patiently. “You explained it to me
yourself. We pass through every point in the Universe, you know that.”
“Yeah, but that’s one wild coincidence isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Picking someone up at that point? Out of the whole of the Universe
to choose from? That’s just too… I want to work this out. Computer!”
The Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Shipboard Computer which
controlled and permeated every particle of the ship switched into
communication mode.
“Hi there!” it said brightly and simultaneously spewed out a tiny
ribbon of ticker tape just for the record. The ticker tape said, Hi there!
“Oh God,” said Zaphod. He hadn’t worked with this computer for long
but had already learned to loathe it.
The computer continued, brash and cheery as if it was selling
detergent.
“I want you to know that whatever your problem, I am here to help you
solve it.”
“Yeah yeah,” said Zaphod. “Look, I think I’ll just use a piece of
paper.”
“Sure thing,” said the computer, spilling out its message into a
waste bin at the same time, “I understand. If you ever want…”
“Shut up!” said Zaphod, and snatching up a pencil sat down next to
Trillian at the console.
“OK, OK…” said the computer in a hurt tone of voice and closed down
its speech channel again.
Zaphod and Trillian pored over the figures that the Improbability
flight path scanner flashed silently up in front of them.
“Can we work out,” said Zaphod, “from their point of view what the
Improbability of their rescue was?”
“Yes, that’s a constant”, said Trillian, “two to the power of two
hundred and seventy-six thousand seven hundred and nine to one against.”
“That’s high. They’re two lucky lucky guys.”
“Yes.”
“But relative to what we were doing when the ship picked them up…”
Trillian punched up the figures. They showed tow-to-the
power-of-Infinity-minus-one (an irrational number that only has a
conventional meaning in Improbability physics).
“… it’s pretty low,” continued Zaphod with a slight whistle.
“Yes,” agreed Trillian, and looked at him quizzically.
“That’s one big whack of Improbability to be accounted for. Something
pretty improbable has got to show up on the balance sheet if it’s all
going to add up into a pretty sum.”
Zaphod scribbled a few sums, crossed them out and threw the pencil
away.
“Bat’s dots, I can’t work it out.”
“Well?”
Zaphod knocked his two heads together in irritation and gritted his
teeth.
“OK,” he said. “Computer!”
The voice circuits sprang to life again.
“Why hello there!” they said (ticker tape, ticker tape). “All I want
to do is make your day nicer and nicer and nicer…”
“Yeah well shut up and work something out for me.”
“Sure thing,” chattered the computer, “you want a probability
forecast based on…”
“Improbability data, yeah.”
“OK,” the computer continued. “Here’s an interesting little notion.
Did you realize that most people’s lives are governed by telephone
numbers?”
A pained look crawled across one of Zaphod’s faces and on to the
other one.
“Have you flipped?” he said.
“No, but you will when I tell you that…”
Trillian gasped. She scrabbled at the buttons on the Improbability
flight path screen.
“Telephone number?” she said. “Did that thing say telephone number?”
Numbers flashed up on the screen.
The computer had paused politely, but now it continued.
“What I was about to say was that…”
“Don’t bother please,” said Trillian.
“Look, what is this?” said Zaphod.
“I don’t know,” said Trillian, “but those aliens – they’re on the way
up to the bridge with that wretched robot. Can we pick them up on any
monitor cameras?”

13

Marvin trudged on down the corridor, still moaning.
“… and then of course I’ve got this terrible pain in all the diodes
down my left hand side…”
“No?” said Arthur grimly as he walked along beside him. “Really?”
“Oh yes,” said Marvin, “I mean I’ve asked for them to be replaced but
no one ever listens.”
“I can imagine.”
Vague whistling and humming noises were coming from Ford. “Well well
well,” he kept saying to himself, “Zaphod Beeblebrox…”
Suddenly Marvin stopped, and held up a hand.
“You know what’s happened now of course?”
“No, what?” said Arthur, who didn’t what to know.
“We’ve arrived at another of those doors.”
There was a sliding door let into the side of the corridor. Marvin
eyed it suspiciously.
“Well?” said Ford impatiently. “Do we go through?”
“Do we go through?” mimicked Marvin. “Yes. This is the entrance to
the bridge. I was told to take you to the bridge. Probably the highest
demand that will be made on my intellectual capacities today I shouldn’t
wonder.”
Slowly, with great loathing, he stepped towards the door, like a
hunter stalking his prey. Suddenly it slid open.
“Thank you,” it said, “for making a simple door very happy.”
Deep in Marvin’s thorax gears ground.
“Funny,” he intoned funerally, “how just when you think life can’t
possibly get any worse it suddenly does.”
He heaved himself through the door and left Ford and Arthur staring
at each other and shrugging their shoulders. From inside they heard
Marvin’s voice again.
“I suppose you want to see the aliens now,” he said. “Do you want me
to sit in a corner and rust, or just fall apart where I’m standing?”
“Yeah, just show them in would you Marvin?” came another voice.
Arthur looked at Ford and was astonished to see him laughing.
“What’s?..”
“Shhh,” said Ford, “come in.”
He stepped through into the bridge.
Arthur followed him in nervously and was astonished to see a man
lolling back in a chair with his feet on a control console picking the
teeth in his right-hand head with his left hand. The right-hand head
seemed to be thoroughly preoccupied with this task, but the left-hand one
was grinning a broad, relaxed, nonchalant grin. The number of things that
Arthur couldn’t believe he was seeing was fairly large. His jaw flapped
about at a loose end for a while.
The peculiar man waved a lazy wave at Ford and with an appalling
affectation of nonchalance said, “Ford, hi, how are you? Glad you could
drop in.”
Ford was not going to be outcooled.
“Zaphod,” he drawled, “great to see you, you’re looking well, the
extra arm suits you. Nice ship you’ve stolen.”
Arthur goggled at him.
“You mean you know this guy?” he said, waving a wild finger at
Zaphod.
“Know him!” exclaimed Ford, “he’s…” he paused, and decided to do
the introductions the other way round.
“Oh, Zaphod, this is a friend of mine, Arthur Dent,” he said, “I
saved him when his planet blew up.”
“Oh sure,” said Zaphod, “hi Arthur, glad you could make it.” His
right-hand head looked round casually, said “hi” and went back to having
his teeth picked.
Ford carried on. “And Arthur,” he said, “this is my semi-cousin
Zaphod Beeb…”
“We’ve met,” said Arthur sharply.
When you’re cruising down the road in the fast lane and you lazily
sail past a few hard driving cars and are feeling pretty pleased with
yourself and then accidentally change down from fourth to first instead of
third thus making your engine leap out of your bonnet in a rather ugly
mess, it tends to throw you off your stride in much the same way that this
remark threw Ford Prefect off his.
“Err… what?”
“I said we’ve met.”
Zaphod gave an awkward start of surprise and jabbed a gum sharply.
“Hey… er, have we? Hey… er…”
Ford rounded on Arthur with an angry flash in his eyes. Now he felt
he was back on home ground he suddenly began to resent having lumbered
himself with this ignorant primitive who knew as much about the affairs of
the Galaxy as an Ilford-based gnat knew about life in Peking.
“What do you mean you’ve met?” he demanded. “This is Zaphod
Beeblebrox from Betelgeuse Five you know, not bloody Martin Smith from
Croydon.”
“I don’t care,” said Arthur coldly. We’ve met, haven’t we Zaphod
Beeblebrox – or should I say… Phil?”
“What!” shouted Ford.
“You’ll have to remind me,” said Zaphod. “I’ve a terrible memory for
species.”
“It was at a party,” pursued Arthur.
“Yeah, well I doubt that,” said Zaphod.
“Cool it will you Arthur!” demanded Ford.
Arthur would not be deterred. “A party six months ago. On Earth…
England…”
Zaphod shook his head with a tight-lipped smile.
“London,” insisted Arthur, “Islington.”
“Oh,” said Zaphod with a guilty start, “that party.”
This wasn’t fair on Ford at all. He looked backwards and forwards
between Arthur and Zaphod. “What?” he said to Zaphod. “You don’t mean to
say you’ve been on that miserable planet as well do you?”
“No, of course not,” said Zaphod breezily. “Well, I may have just
dropped in briefly, you know, on my way somewhere…”
“But I was stuck there for fifteen years!”
“Well I didn’t know that did I?”
“But what were you doing there?”
“Looking about, you know.”
“He gatecrashed a party,” persisted Arthur, trembling with anger, “a
fancy dress party…”
“It would have to be, wouldn’t it?” said Ford.
“At this party,” persisted Arthur, “was a girl… oh well, look it
doesn’t matter now. The whole place has gone up in smoke anyway…”
“I wish you’d stop sulking about that bloody planet,” said Ford. “Who
was the lady?”
“Oh just somebody. Well alright, I wasn’t doing very well with her.
I’d been trying all evening. Hell, she was something though. Beautiful,
charming, devastatingly intelligent, at last I’d got her to myself for a
bit and was plying her with a bit of talk when this friend of yours barges
up and says Hey doll, is this guy boring you? Why don’t you talk to me
instead? I’m from a different planet.” I never saw her again.”
“Zaphod?” exclaimed Ford.
“Yes,” said Arthur, glaring at him and trying not to feel foolish.
“He only had the two arms and the one head and he called himself Phil,
but…”
“But you must admit he did turn out to be from another planet,” said
Trillian wandering into sight at the other end of the bridge. She gave
Arthur a pleasant smile which settled on him like a ton of bricks and then
turned her attention to the ship’s controls again.
There was silence for a few seconds, and then out of the scrambled
mess of Arthur’s brain crawled some words.
“Tricia McMillian?” he said. “What are you doing here?”
“Same as you,” she said, “I hitched a lift. After all with a degree
in Maths and another in astrophysics what else was there to do? It was
either that or the dole queue again on Monday.”
“Infinity minus one,” chattered the computer, “Improbability sum now
complete.”
Zaphod looked about him, at Ford, at Arthur, and then at Trillian.
“Trillian,” he said, “is this sort of thing going to happen every
time we use the Improbability drive?”
“Very probably, I’m afraid,” she said.

14

The Heart of Gold fled on silently through the night of space, now on
conventional photon drive. Its crew of four were ill at ease knowing that
they had been brought together not of their own volition or by simple
coincidence, but by some curious principle of physics – as if
relationships between people were susceptible to the same laws that
governed the relationships between atoms and molecules.
As the ship’s artificial night closed in they were each grateful to
retire to separate cabins and try to rationalize their thoughts.
Trillian couldn’t sleep. She sat on a couch and stared at a small
cage which contained her last and only links with Earth – two white mice
that she had insisted Zaphod let her bring. She had expected not to see
the planet again, but she was disturbed by her negative reaction to the
planet’s destruction. It seemed remote and unreal and she could find no
thoughts to think about it. She watched the mice scurrying round the cage
and running furiously in their little plastic treadwheels till they
occupied her whole attention. Suddenly she shook herself and went back to
the bridge to watch over the tiny flashing lights and figures that charted
the ship’s progress through the void. She wished she knew what it was she
was trying not to think about.
Zaphod couldn’t sleep. He also wished he knew what it was that he
wouldn’t let himself think about. For as long as he could remember he’d
suffered from a vague nagging feeling of being not all there. Most of the
time he was able to put this thought aside and not worry about it, but it
had been re-awakened by the sudden inexplicable arrival of Ford Prefect
and Arthur Dent. Somehow it seemed to conform to a pattern that he
couldn’t see.
Ford couldn’t sleep. He was too excited about being back on the road
again. Fifteen years of virtual imprisonment were over, just as he was
finally beginning to give up hope. Knocking about with Zaphod for a bit
promised to be a lot of fun, though there seemed to be something faintly
odd about his semi-cousin that he couldn’t put his finger on. The fact
that he had become President of the Galaxy was frankly astonishing, as was
the manner of his leaving the post. Was there a reason behind it? There
would be no point in asking Zaphod, he never appeared to have a reason for
anything he did at all: he had turned unfathomably into an art form. He
attacked everything in life with a mixture of extraordinary genius and
naive incompetence and it was often difficult to tell which was which.
Arthur slept: he was terribly tired.
There was a tap at Zaphod’s door. It slid open.
“Zaphod?..”
“Yeah?”
“I think we just found what you came to look for.”
“Hey, yeah?”
Ford gave up the attempt to sleep. In the corner of his cabin was a
small computer screen and keyboard. He sat at it for a while and tried to
compose a new entry for the Guide on the subject of Vogons but couldn’t
think of anything vitriolic enough so he gave that up too, wrapped a robe
round himself and went for a walk to the bridge.
As he entered he was surprised to see two figures hunched excitedly
over the instruments.
“See? The ship’s about to move into orbit,” Trillian was saying.
“There’s a planet out there. It’s at the exact coordinates you predicted.”
Zaphod heard a noise and looked up.
“Ford!” he hissed. “Hey, come and take a look at this.”
Ford went and had a look at it. It was a series of figures flashing
over a screen.
“You recognize those Galactic coordinates?” said Zaphod.
“No.”
“I’ll give you a clue. Computer!”
“Hi gang!” enthused the computer. “This is getting real sociable
isn’t it?”
“Shut up,” said Zaphod, “and show up the screens.”
Light on the bridge sank. Pinpoints of light played across the
consoles and reflected in four pairs of eyes that stared up at the
external monitor screens.
There was absolutely nothing on them.
“Recognize that?” whispered Zaphod.
Ford frowned.
“Er, no,” he said.
“What do you see?”
“Nothing.”
“Recognize it?”
“What are you talking about?”
“We’re in the Horsehead Nebula. One whole vast dark cloud.”
“And I was meant to recognize that from a blank screen?”
“Inside a dark nebula is the only place in the Galaxy you’d see a
dark screen.”
“Very good.”
Zaphod laughed. He was clearly very excited about something, almost
childishly so.
“Hey, this is really terrific, this is just far too much!”
“What’s so great about being stuck in a dust cloud?” said Ford.
“What would you reckon to find here?” urged Zaphod.
“Nothing.”
“No stars? No planets?”
“No.”
“Computer!” shouted Zaphod, “rotate angle of vision through oneeighty
degrees and don’t talk about it!”
For a moment it seemed that nothing was happening, then a brightness
glowed at the edge of the huge screen. A red star the size of a small
plate crept across it followed quickly by another one – a binary system.
Then a vast crescent sliced into the corner of the picture – a red glare
shading away into the deep black, the night side of the planet.
“I’ve found it!” cried Zaphod, thumping the console. “I’ve found it!”
Ford stared at it in astonishment.
“What is it?” he said.
“That…” said Zaphod, “is the most improbable planet that ever
existed.”

15

(Excerpt from The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Page 634784,
Section 5a, Entry: Magrathea)
Far back in the mists of ancient time, in the great and glorious days
of the former Galactic Empire, life was wild, rich and largely tax free.
Mighty starships plied their way between exotic suns, seeking
adventure and reward amongst the furthest reaches of Galactic space. In
those days spirits were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men,
women were real women, and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were
real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri. And all dared to brave
unknown terrors, to do mighty deeds, to boldly split infinitives that no
man had split before – and thus was the Empire forged.
Many men of course became extremely rich, but this was perfectly
natural and nothing to be ashamed of because no one was really poor – at
least no one worth speaking of. And for all the richest and most
successful merchants life inevitably became rather dull and niggly, and
they began to imagine that this was therefore the fault of the worlds
they’d settled on – none of them was entirely satisfactory: either the
climate wasn’t quite right in the later part of the afternoon, or the day
was half an hour too long, or the sea was exactly the wrong shade of pink.
And thus were created the conditions for a staggering new form of
specialist industry: custom-made luxury planet building. The home of this
industry was the planet Magrathea, where hyperspatial engineers sucked
matter through white holes in space to form it into dream planets – gold
planets, platinum planets, soft rubber planets with lots of earthquakes -
all lovingly made to meet the exacting standards that the Galaxy’s richest
men naturally came to expect.
But so successful was this venture that Magrathea itself soon became
the richest planet of all time and the rest of the Galaxy was reduced to
abject poverty. And so the system broke down, the Empire collapsed, and a
long sullen silence settled over a billion worlds, disturbed only by the
pen scratchings of scholars as they laboured into the night over smug
little treaties on the value of a planned political economy.
Magrathea itself disappeared and its memory soon passed into the
obscurity of legend.
In these enlightened days of course, no one believes a word of it.

16

Arthur awoke to the sound of argument and went to the bridge. Ford
was waving his arms about.
“You’re crazy, Zaphod,” he was saying, “Magrathea is a myth, a fairy
story, it’s what parents tell their kids about at night if they want them
to grow up to become economists, it’s…”
“And that’s what we are currently in orbit around,” insisted Zaphod.
“Look, I can’t help what you may personally be in orbit around,” said
Ford, “but this ship…”
“Computer!” shouted Zaphod.
“Oh no…”
“Hi there! This is Eddie your shipboard computer, and I’m feeling
just great guys, and I know I’m just going to get a bundle of kicks out of
any programme you care to run through me.”
Arthur looked inquiringly at Trillian. She motioned him to come on in
but keep quiet.
“Computer,” said Zaphod, “tell us again what our present trajectory
is.”
“A real pleasure feller,” it burbled, “we are currently in orbit at
an altitude of three hundred miles around the legendary planet of
Magrathea.”
“Proving nothing,” said Ford. “I wouldn’t trust that computer to
speak my weight.”
“I can do that for you, sure,” enthused the computer, punching out
more tickertape. “I can even work out you personality problems to ten
decimal places if it will help.”
Trillian interrupted.
“Zaphod,” she said, “any minute now we will be swinging round to the
daylight side of this planet,” adding, “whatever it turns out to be.”
“Hey, what do you mean by that? The planet’s where I predicted it
would be isn’t it?”
“Yes, I know there’s a planet there. I’m not arguing with anyone,
it’s just that I wouldn’t know Magrathea from any other lump of cold rock.
Dawn’s coming up if you want it.”
“OK, OK,” muttered Zaphod, “let’s at least give our eyes a good time.
Computer!”
“Hi there! What can I…”
“Just shut up and give us a view of the planet again.”
A dark featureless mass once more filled the screens – the planet
rolling away beneath them.
They watched for a moment in silence, but Zaphod was fidgety with
excitement.
“We are now traversing the night side…” he said in a hushed voice.
The planet rolled on.
“The surface of the planet is now three hundred miles beneath us…”
he continued. He was trying to restore a sense of occasion to what he felt
should have been a great moment. Magrathea! He was piqued by Ford’s
sceptical reaction. Magrathea!
“In a few seconds,” he continued, “we should see… there!”
The moment carried itself. Even the most seasoned star tramp can’t
help but shiver at the spectacular drama of a sunrise seen from space, but
a binary sunrise is one of the marvels of the Galaxy.
Out of the utter blackness stabbed a sudden point of blinding light.
It crept up by slight degrees and spread sideways in a thin crescent
blade, and within seconds two suns were visible, furnaces of light,
searing the black edge of the horizon with white fire. Fierce shafts of
colour streaked through the thin atmosphere beneath them.
“The fires of dawn!..” breathed Zaphod. “The twin suns of Soulianis
and Rahm!..”
“Or whatever,” said Ford quietly.
“Soulianis and Rahm!” insisted Zaphod.
The suns blazed into the pitch of space and a low ghostly music
floated through the bridge: Marvin was humming ironically because he hated
humans so much.
As Ford gazed at the spectacle of light before them excitement burnt
inside him, but only the excitement of seeing a strange new planet, it was
enough for him to see it as it was. It faintly irritated him that Zaphod
had to impose some ludicrous fantasy on to the scene to make it work for
him. All this Magrathea nonsense seemed juvenile. Isn’t it enough to see
that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are
fairies at the bottom of it too?
All this Magrathea business seemed totally incomprehensible to
Arthur. He edged up to Trillian and asked her what was going on.
“I only know what Zaphod’s told me,” she whispered. “Apparently
Magrathea is some kind of legend from way back which no one seriously
believes in. Bit like Atlantis on Earth, except that the legends say the
Magratheans used to manufacture planets.”
Arthur blinked at the screens and felt he was missing something
important. Suddenly he realized what it was.
“Is there any tea on this spaceship?” he asked.
More of the planet was unfolding beneath them as the Heart of Gold
streaked along its orbital path. The suns now stood high in the black sky,
the pyrotechnics of dawn were over, and the surface of the planet appeared
bleak and forbidding in the common light of day – grey, dusty and only
dimly contoured. It looked dead and cold as a crypt. From time to time
promising features would appear on the distant horizon – ravines, maybe
mountains, maybe even cities – but as they approached the lines would
soften and blur into anonymity and nothing would transpire. The planet’s
surface was blurred by time, by the slow movement of the thin stagnant air
that had crept across it for century upon century.
Clearly, it was very very old.
A moment of doubt came to Ford as he watched the grey landscape move
beneath them. The immensity of time worried him, he could feel it as a
presence. He cleared his throat.
“Well, even supposing it is…”
“It is,” said Zaphod.
“Which it isn’t,” continued Ford. “What do you want with it anyway?
There’s nothing there.”
“Not on the surface,” said Zaphod.
“Alright, just supposing there’s something. I take it you’re not here
for the sheer industrial archaeology of it all. What are you after?”
One of Zaphod’s heads looked away. The other one looked round to see
what the first was looking at, but it wasn’t looking at anything very
much.
“Well,” said Zaphod airily, “it’s partly the curiosity, partly a
sense of adventure, but mostly I think it’s the fame and the money…”
Ford glanced at him sharply. He got a very strong impression that
Zaphod hadn’t the faintest idea why he was there at all.
“You know I don’t like the look of that planet at all,” said Trillian
shivering.
“Ah, take no notice,” said Zaphod, “with half the wealth of the
former Galactic Empire stored on it somewhere it can afford to look
frumpy.”
Bullshit, thought Ford. Even supposing this was the home of some
ancient civilization now gone to dust, even supposing a number of
exceedingly unlikely things, there was no way that vast treasures of
wealth were going to be stored there in any form that would still have
meaning now. He shrugged.
“I think it’s just a dead planet,” he said.
“The suspense is killing me,” said Arthur testily.
Stress and nervous tension are now serious social problems in all
parts of the Galaxy, and it is in order that this situation should not in
any way be exacerbated that the following facts will now be revealed in
advance.
The planet in question is in fact the legendary Magrathea.
The deadly missile attack shortly to be launched by an ancient
automatic defence system will result merely in the breakage of three
coffee cups and a micecage, the bruising of somebody’s upper arm, and the
untimely creation and sudden demise of a bowl of petunias and an innocent
sperm whale.
In order that some sense of mystery should still be preserved, no
revelation will yet be made concerning whose upper arm sustained the
bruise. This fact may safely be made the subject of suspense since it is
of no significance whatsoever.

17

After a fairly shaky start to the day, Arthur’s mind was beginning to
reassemble itself from the shellshocked fragments the previous day had
left him with. He had found a Nutri-Matic machine which had provided him
with a plastic cup filled with a liquid that was almost, but not quite,
entirely unlike tea. The way it functioned was very interesting. When the
Drink button was pressed it made an instant but highly detailed
examination of the subject’s taste buds, a spectroscopic analysis of the
subject’s metabolism and then sent tiny experimental signals down the
neural pathways to the taste centres of the subject’s brain to see what
was likely to go down well. However, no one knew quite why it did this
because it invariably delivered a cupful of liquid that was almost, but
not quite, entirely unlike tea. The Nutri-Matic was designed and
manufactured by the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation whose complaints
department now covers all the major land masses of the first three planets
in the Sirius Tau Star system.
Arthur drank the liquid and found it reviving. He glanced up at the
screens again and watched a few more hundred miles of barren greyness
slide past. It suddenly occurred to him to ask a question which had been
bothering him.
“Is it safe?” he said.
“Magrathea’s been dead for five million years,” said Zaphod, “of
course it’s safe. Even the ghosts will have settled down and raised
families by now.” At which point a strange and inexplicable sound thrilled
suddenly through the bridge – a noise as of a distant fanfare; a hollow,
reedy, insubstantial sound. It preceded a voice that was equally hollow,
reedy and insubstantial. The voice said “Greetings to you…”
Someone from the dead planet was talking to them.
“Computer!” shouted Zaphod.
“Hi there!”
“What the photon is it?”
“Oh, just some five-million-year-old tape that’s being broadcast at
us.”
“A what? A recording?”
“Shush!” said Ford. “It’s carrying on.”
The voice was old, courteous, almost charming, but was underscored
with quite unmistakable menace.
“This is a recorded announcement,” it said, “as I’m afraid we’re all
out at the moment. The commercial council of Magrathea thanks you for your
esteemed visit…”
(“A voice from ancient Magrathea!” shouted Zaphod. “OK, OK,” said
Ford.)
“… but regrets,” continued the voice, “that the entire planet is
temporarily closed for business. Thank you. If you would care to leave
your name and the address of a planet where you can be contacted, kindly
speak when you hear the tone.”
A short buzz followed, then silence.
“They want to get rid of us,” said Trillian nervously. “What do we
do?”
“It’s just a recording,” said Zaphod. “We keep going. Got that,
computer?”
“I got it,” said the computer and gave the ship an extra kick of
speed.
They waited.
After a second or so came the fanfare once again, and then the voice.
“We would like to assure you that as soon as our business is resumed
announcements will be made in all fashionable magazines and colour
supplements, when our clients will once again be able to select from all
that’s best in contemporary geography.” The menace in the voice took on a
sharper edge. “Meanwhile we thank our clients for their kind interest and
would ask them to leave. Now.”
Arthur looked round the nervous faces of his companions.
“Well, I suppose we’d better be going then, hadn’t we?” he suggested.
“Shhh!” said Zaphod. “There’s absolutely nothing to be worried
about.”
“Then why’s everyone so tense?”
“They’re just interested!” shouted Zaphod. “Computer, start a descent
into the atmosphere and prepare for landing.”
This time the fanfare was quite perfunctory, the voice distinctly
cold.
“It is most gratifying,” it said, “that your enthusiasm for our
planet continues unabated, and so we would like to assure you that the
guided missiles currently converging with your ship are part of a special
service we extend to all of our most enthusiastic clients, and the fully
armed nuclear warheads are of course merely a courtesy detail. We look
forward to your custom in future lives… thank you.”
The voice snapped off.
“Oh,” said Trillian.
“Er…” said Arthur.
“Well?” said Ford.
“Look,” said Zaphod, “will you get it into your heads? That’s just a
recorded message. It’s millions of years old. It doesn’t apply to us, get
it?”
“What,” said Trillian quietly, “about the missiles?”
“Missiles? Don’t make me laugh.”
Ford tapped Zaphod on the shoulder and pointed at the rear screen.
Clear in the distance behind them two silver darts were climbing through
the atmosphere towards the ship. A quick change of magnification brought
them into close focus – two massively real rockets thundering through the
sky. The suddenness of it was shocking.
“I think they’re going to have a very good try at applying to us,”
said Ford.
Zaphod stared at them in astonishment.
“Hey this is terrific!” he said. “Someone down there is trying to
kill us!”
“Terrific,” said Arthur.
“But don’t you see what this means?”
“Yes. We’re going to die.”
“Yes, but apart from that.”
“Apart from that?”
“It means we must be on to something!”
“How soon can we get off it?”
Second by second the image of the missiles on the screen became
larger. They had swung round now on to a direct homing course so that all
that could be seen of them now was the warheads, head on.
“As a matter of interest,” said Trillian, “what are we going to do?”
“Just keep cool,” said Zaphod.
“Is that all?” shouted Arthur.
“No, we’re also going to… er… take evasive action!” said Zaphod
with a sudden access of panic. “Computer, what evasive action can we
take?”
“Er, none I’m afraid, guys,” said the computer.
“… or something…”, said Zaphod, “er…” he said.
“There seems to be something jamming my guidance system,” explained
the computer brightly, “impact minus forty-five seconds. Please call me
Eddie if it will help you to relax.”
Zaphod tried to run in several equally decisive directions
simultaneously. “Right!” he said. “Er… we’ve got to get manual control
of this ship.”
“Can you fly her?” asked Ford pleasantly.
“No, can you?”
“No.”
“Trillian, can you?”
“No.”
“Fine,” said Zaphod, relaxing. “We’ll do it together.”
“I can’t either,” said Arthur, who felt it was time he began to
assert himself.
“I’d guessed that,” said Zaphod. “OK computer, I want full manual
control now.”
“You got it,” said the computer.
Several large desk panels slid open and banks of control consoles
sprang up out of them, showering the crew with bits of expanded
polystyrene packaging and balls of rolled-up cellophane: these controls
had never been used before.
Zaphod stared at them wildly.
“OK, Ford,” he said, “full retro thrust and ten degrees starboard. Or
something…”
“Good luck guys,” chirped the computer, “impact minus thirty
seconds…”
Ford leapt to the controls – only a few of them made any immediate
sense to him so he pulled those. The ship shook and screamed as its
guidance rocked jets tried to push it every which way simultaneously. He
released half of them and the ship span round in a tight arc and headed
back the way it had come, straight towards the oncoming missiles.
Air cushions ballooned out of the walls in an instant as everyone was
thrown against them. For a few seconds the inertial forces held them
flattened and squirming for breath, unable to move. Zaphod struggled and
pushed in manic desperation and finally managed a savage kick at a small
lever that formed part of the guidance system.
The lever snapped off. The ship twisted sharply and rocketed upwards.
The crew were hurled violently back across the cabin. Ford’s copy of The
Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy smashed into another section of the
control console with the combined result that the guide started to explain
to anyone who cared to listen about the best ways of smuggling Antarean
parakeet glands out of Antares (an Antarean parakeet gland stuck on a
small stick is a revolting but much sought after cocktail delicacy and
very large sums of money are often paid for them by very rich idiots who
want to impress other very rich idiots), and the ship suddenly dropped out
of the sky like a stone.
It was of course more or less at this moment that one of the crew
sustained a nasty bruise to the upper arm. This should be emphasized
because, as had already been revealed, they escape otherwise completely
unharmed and the deadly nuclear missiles do not eventually hit the ship.
The safety of the crew is absolutely assured.
“Impact minus twenty seconds, guys…” said the computer.
“Then turn the bloody engines back on!” bawled Zaphod.
“OK, sure thing, guys,” said the computer. With a subtle roar the
engines cut back in, the ship smoothly flattened out of its dive and
headed back towards the missiles again.
The computer started to sing.
“When you walk through the storm…” it whined nasally, “hold your
head up high…”
Zaphod screamed at it to shut up, but his voice was lost in the din
of what they quite naturally assumed was approaching destruction.
“And don’t… be afraid… of the dark!” Eddie wailed.
The ship, in flattening out had in fact flattened out upside down and
lying on the ceiling as they were it was now totally impossible for any of
the crew to reach the guidance systems.
“At the end of the storm…” crooned Eddie.
The two missiles loomed massively on the screens as they thundered
towards the ship.
“… is a golden sky…”
But by an extraordinarily lucky chance they had not yet fully
corrected their flight paths to that of the erratically weaving ship, and
they passed right under it.
“And the sweet silver songs of the lark… Revised impact time
fifteen seconds fellas… Walk on through the wind…”
The missiles banked round in a screeching arc and plunged back into
pursuit.
“This is it,” said Arthur watching them. “We are now quite definitely
going to die aren’t we?”
“I wish you’d stop saying that,” shouted Ford.
“Well we are aren’t we?”
“Yes.”
“Walk on through the rain…” sang Eddie.
A thought struck Arthur. He struggled to his feet.
“Why doesn’t anyone turn on this Improbability Drive thing?” he said.
“We could probably reach that.”
“What are you crazy?” said Zaphod. “Without proper programming
anything could happen.”
“Does that matter at this stage?” shouted Arthur.
“Though your dreams be tossed and blown…” sand Eddie.
Arthur scrambled up on to one end of the excitingly chunky pieces of
moulded contouring where the curve of the wall met the ceiling.
“Walk on, walk on, with hope in your heart…”
“Does anyone know why Arthur can’t turn on the Improbability Drive?”
shouted Trillian.
“And you’ll never walk alone… Impact minus five seconds, it’s been
great knowing you guys, God bless… You’ll ne… ver… walk… alone!”
“I said,” yelled Trillian, “does anyone know…”
The next thing that happened was a mid-mangling explosion of noise
and light.

18

And the next thing that happened after that was that the Heart of
Gold continued on its way perfectly normally with a rather fetchingly
redesigned interior. It was somewhat larger, and done out in delicate
pastel shades of green and blue. In the centre a spiral staircase, leading
nowhere in particular, stood in a spray of ferns and yellow flowers and
next to it a stone sundial pedestal housed the main computer terminal.
Cunningly deployed lighting and mirrors created the illusion of standing
in a conservatory overlooking a wide stretch of exquisitely manicured
garden. Around the periphery of the conservatory area stood marble-topped
tables on intricately beautiful wrought-iron legs. As you gazed into the
polished surface of the marble the vague forms of instruments became
visible, and as you touched them the instruments materialized instantly
under your hands. Looked at from the correct angles the mirrors appeared
to reflect all the required data readouts, though it was far from clear
where they were reflected from. It was in fact sensationally beautiful.
Relaxing in a wickerwork sun chair, Zaphod Beeblebrox said, “What the
hell happened?”
“Well I was just saying,” said Arthur lounging by a small fish pool,
“there’s this Improbability Drive switch over here…” he waved at where
it had been. There was a potted plant there now.
“But where are we?” said Ford who was sitting on the spiral
staircase, a nicely chilled Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster in his hand.
“Exactly where we were, I think…” said Trillian, as all about them
the mirrors showed them an image of the blighted landscape of Magrathea
which still scooted along beneath them.
Zaphod leapt out of his seat.
“Then what’s happened to the missiles?” he said.
A new and astounding image appeared in the mirrors.
“They would appear,” said Ford doubtfully, “to have turned into a
bowl of petunias and a very surprised looking whale…”
“At an Improbability Factor,” cut in Eddie, who hadn’t changed a bit,
“of eight million seven hundred and sixty-seven thousand one hundred and
twenty-eight to one against.”
Zaphod stared at Arthur.
“Did you think of that, Earthman?” he demanded.
“Well,” said Arthur, “all I did was…”
“That’s very good thinking you know. Turn on the Improbability Drive
for a second without first activating the proofing screens. Hey kid you
just saved our lives, you know that?”
“Oh,” said Arthur, “well, it was nothing really…”
“Was it?” said Zaphod. “Oh well, forget it then. OK, computer, take
us in to land.”
“But…”
“I said forget it.”
Another thing that got forgotten was the fact that against all
probability a sperm whale had suddenly been called into existence several
miles above the surface of an alien planet.
And since this is not a naturally tenable position for a whale, this
poor innocent creature had very little time to come to terms with its
identity as a whale before it then had to come to terms with not being a
whale any more.
This is a complete record of its thoughts from the moment it began
its life till the moment it ended it.
Ah!.. What’s happening? it thought.
Er, excuse me, who am I?
Hello?
Why am I here? What’s my purpose in life?
What do I mean by who am I?
Calm down, get a grip now… oh! this is an interesting sensation,
what is it? It’s a sort of… yawning, tingling sensation in my… my…
well I suppose I’d better start finding names for things if I want to make
any headway in what for the sake of what I shall call an argument I shall
call the world, so let’s call it my stomach.
Good. Ooooh, it’s getting quite strong. And hey, what’s about this
whistling roaring sound going past what I’m suddenly going to call my
head? Perhaps I can call that… wind! Is that a good name? It’ll do…
perhaps I can find a better name for it later when I’ve found out what
it’s for. It must be something very important because there certainly
seems to be a hell of a lot of it. Hey! What’s this thing? This… let’s
call it a tail – yeah, tail. Hey! I can can really thrash it about pretty
good can’t I? Wow! Wow! That feels great! Doesn’t seem to achieve very
much but I’ll probably find out what it’s for later on. Now – have I built
up any coherent picture of things yet?
No.
Never mind, hey, this is really exciting, so much to find out about,
so much to look forward to, I’m quite dizzy with anticipation…
Or is it the wind?
There really is a lot of that now isn’t it?
And wow! Hey! What’s this thing suddenly coming towards me very fast?
Very very fast. So big and flat and round, it needs a big wide sounding
name like… ow… ound… round… ground! That’s it! That’s a good name
- ground!
I wonder if it will be friends with me?
And the rest, after a sudden wet thud, was silence.
Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the
bowl of petunias as it fell was Oh no, not again. Many people have
speculated that if we knew exactly why the bowl of petunias had thought
that we would know a lot more about the nature of the universe than we do
now.

19

“Are we taking this robot with us?” said Ford, looking with distaste
at Marvin who was standing in an awkward hunched posture in the corner
under a small palm tree.
Zaphod glanced away from the mirror screens which presented a
panoramic view of the blighted landscape on which the Heart of Gold had
now landed.
“Oh, the Paranoid Android,” he said. “Yeah, we’ll take him.”
“But what are supposed to do with a manically depressed robot?”
“You think you’ve got problems,” said Marvin as if he was addressing
a newly occupied coffin, “what are you supposed to do if you are a
manically depressed robot? No, don’t bother to answer that, I’m fifty
thousand times more intelligent than you and even I don’t know the answer.
It gives me a headache just trying to think down to your level.”
Trillian burst in through the door from her cabin.
“My white mice have escaped!” she said.
An expression of deep worry and concern failed to cross either of
Zaphod’s faces.
“Nuts to your white mice,” he said.
Trillian glared an upset glare at him, and disappeared again.
It is possible that her remark would have commanded greater attention
had it been generally realized that human beings were only the third most
intelligent life form present on the planet Earth, instead of (as was
generally thought by most independent observers) the second.
“Good afternoon boys.”
The voice was oddly familiar, but oddly different. It had a
matriarchal twang. It announced itself to the crew as they arrived at the
airlock hatchway that would let them out on the planet surface.
They looked at each other in puzzlement.
“It’s the computer,” explained Zaphod. “I discovered it had an
emergency back-up personality that I thought might work out better.”
“Now this is going to be your first day out on a strange new planet,”
continued Eddie’s new voice, “so I want you all wrapped up snug and warm,
and no playing with any naughty bug-eyed monsters.”
Zaphod tapped impatiently on the hatch.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “I think we might be better off with a slide
rule.”
“Right!” snapped the computer. “Who said that?”
“Will you open the exit hatch please, computer?” said Zaphod trying
not to get angry.
“Not until whoever said that owns up,” urged the computer, stamping a
few synapses closed.
“Oh God,” muttered Ford, slumped against a bulkhead and started to
count to ten. He was desperately worried that one day sentinent life forms
would forget how to do this. Only by counting could humans demonstrate
their independence of computers.
“Come on,” said Eddie sternly.
“Computer…” began Zaphod…
“I’m waiting,” interrupted Eddie. “I can wait all day if
necessary…”
“Computer…” said Zaphod again, who had been trying to think of some
subtle piece of reasoning to put the computer down with, and had decided
not to bother competing with it on its own ground, “if you don’t open that
exit hatch this moment I shall zap straight off to your major data banks
and reprogram you with a very large axe, got that?”
Eddie, shocked, paused and considered this.
Ford carried on counting quietly. This is about the most aggressive
thing you can do to a computer, the equivalent of going up to a human
being and saying Blood… blood… blood… blood…
Finally Eddie said quietly, “I can see this relationship is something
we’re all going to have to work at,” and the hatchway opened.
An icy wind ripped into them, they hugged themselves warmly and
stepped down the ramp on to the barren dust of Magrathea.
“It’ll all end in tears, I know it,” shouted Eddie after them and
closed the hatchway again.
A few minutes later he opened and closed the hatchway again in
response to a command that caught him entirely by surprise.

20

Five figures wandered slowly over the blighted land. Bits of it were
dullish grey, bits of it dullish brown, the rest of it rather less
interesting to look at. It was like a dried-out marsh, now barren of all
vegetation and covered with a layer of dust about an inch thick. It was
very cold.
Zaphod was clearly rather depressed about it. He stalked off by
himself and was soon lost to sight behind a slight rise in the ground.
The wind stung Arthur’s eyes and ears, and the stale thin air clasped
his throat. However, the thing stung most was his mind.
“It’s fantastic…” he said, and his own voice rattled his ears.
Sound carried badly in this thin atmosphere.
“Desolate hole if you ask me,” said Ford. “I could have more fun in a
cat litter.” He felt a mounting irritation. Of all the planets in all the
star systems of all the Galaxy – didn’t he just have to turn up at a dump
like this after fifteen years of being a castaway? Not even a hot dog
stand in evidence. He stooped down and picked up a cold clot of earth, but
there was nothing underneath it worth crossing thousands of light years to
look at.
“No,” insisted Arthur, “don’t you understand, this is the first time
I’ve actually stood on the surface of another planet… a whole alien
world!.. Pity it’s such a dump though.”
Trillian hugged herself, shivered and frowned. She could have sworn
she saw a slight and unexpected movement out of the corner of her eye, but
when she glanced in that direction all she could see was the ship, still
and silent, a hundred yards or so behind them.
She was relieved when a second or so later they caught sight of
Zaphod standing on top of the ridge of ground and waving to them to come
and join him.
He seemed to be excited, but they couldn’t clearly hear what he was
saying because of the thinnish atmosphere and the wind.
As they approached the ridge of higher ground they became aware that
it seemed to be circular – a crater about a hundred and fifty yards wide.
Round the outside of the crater the sloping ground was spattered with
black and red lumps. They stopped and looked at a piece. It was wet. It
was rubbery.
With horror they suddenly realized that it was fresh whalemeat.
At the top of the crater’s lip they met Zaphod.
“Look,” he said, pointing into the crater.
In the centre lay the exploded carcass of a lonely sperm whale that
hadn’t lived long enough to be disappointed with its lot. The silence was
only disturbed by the slight involuntary spasms of Trillian’s throat.
“I suppose there’s no point in trying to bury it?” murmured Arthur,
and then wished he hadn’t.
“Come,” said Zaphod and started back down into the crater.
“What, down there?” said Trillian with severe distaste.
“Yeah,” said Zaphod, “come on, I’ve got something to show you.”
“We can see it,” said Trillian.
“Not that,” said Zaphod, “something else. Come on.”
They all hesitated.
“Come on,” insisted Zaphod, “I’ve found a way in.”
“In?” said Arthur in horror.
“Into the interior of the planet! An underground passage. The force
of the whale’s impact cracked it open, and that’s where we have to go.
Where no man has trod these five million years, into the very depths of
time itself…”
Marvin started his ironical humming again.
Zaphod hit him and he shut up.
With little shudders of disgust they all followed Zaphod down the
incline into the crater, trying very hard not to look at its unfortunate
creator.
“Life,” said Marvin dolefully, “loathe it or ignore it, you can’t
like it.”
The ground had caved in where the whale had hit it revealing a
network of galleries and passages, now largely obstructed by collapsed
rubble and entrails. Zaphod had made a start clearing a way into one of
them, but Marvin was able to do it rather faster. Dank air wafted out of
its dark recesses, and as Zaphod shone a torch into it, little was visible
in the dusty gloom.
“According to the legends,” he said, “the Magratheans lived most of
their lives underground.”
“Why’s that?” said Arthur. “Did the surface become too polluted or
overpopulated?”
“No, I don’t think so,” said Zaphod. “I think they just didn’t like
it very much.”
“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” said Trillian peering
nervously into the darkness. “We’ve been attacked once already you know.”
“Look kid, I promise you the live population of this planet is nil
plus the four of us, so come on, let’s get on in there. Er, hey
Earthman…”
“Arthur,” said Arthur.
“Yeah could you just sort of keep this robot with you and guard this
end of the passageway. OK?”
“Guard?” said Arthur. “What from? You just said there’s no one here.”
“Yeah, well, just for safety, OK?” said Zaphod.
“Whose? Yours or mine?”
“Good lad. OK, here we go.”
Zaphod scrambled down into the passage, followed by Trillian and
Ford.
“Well I hope you all have a really miserable time,” complained
Arthur.
“Don’t worry,” Marvin assured him, “they will.”
In a few seconds they had disappeared from view.
Arthur stamped around in a huff, and then decided that a whale’s
graveyard is not on the whole a good place to stamp around in.
Marvin eyed him balefully for a moment, and then turned himself off.
Zaphod marched quickly down the passageway, nervous as hell, but
trying to hide it by striding purposefully. He flung the torch beam
around. The walls were covered in dark tiles and were cold to the touch,
the air thick with decay.
“There, what did I tell you?” he said. “An inhabited planet.
Magrathea,” and he strode on through the dirt and debris that littered the
tile floor.
Trillian was reminded unavoidably of the London Underground, though
it was less thoroughly squalid.
At intervals along the walls the tiles gave way to large mosaics -
simple angular patterns in bright colours. Trillian stopped and studied
one of them but could not interpret any sense in them. She called to
Zaphod.
“Hey, have you any idea what these strange symbols are?”
“I think they’re just strange symbols of some kind,” said Zaphod,
hardly glancing back.
Trillian shrugged and hurried after him.
From time to time a doorway led either to the left or right into
smallish chambers which Ford discovered to be full of derelict computer
equipment. He dragged Zaphod into one to have a look. Trillian followed.
“Look,” said Ford, “you reckon this is Magrathea…”
“Yeah,” said Zaphod, “and we heard the voice, right?”
“OK, so I’ve bought the fact that it’s Magrathea – for the moment.
What you have so far said nothing about is how in the Galaxy you found it.
You didn’t just look it up in a star atlas, that’s for sure.”
“Research. Government archives. Detective work. Few lucky guesses.
Easy.”
“And then you stole the Heart of Gold to come and look for it with?”
“I stole it to look for a lot of things.”
“A lot of things?” said Ford in surprise. “Like what?”
“I don’t know.”
“What?”
“I don’t know what I’m looking for.”
“Why not?”
“Because… because… I think it might be because if I knew I
wouldn’t be able to look for them.”
“What, are you crazy?”
“It’s a possibility I haven’t ruled out yet,” said Zaphod quietly. “I
only know as much about myself as my mind can work out under its current
conditions. And its current conditions are not good.”
For a long time nobody said anything as Ford gazed at Zaphod with a
mind suddenly full of worry.
“Listen old friend, if you want to…” started Ford eventually.
“No, wait… I’ll tell you something,” said Zaphod. “I freewheel a
lot. I get an idea to do something, and, hey, why not, I do it. I reckon
I’ll become President of the Galaxy, and it just happens, it’s easy. I
decide to steal this ship. I decide to look for Magrathea, and it all just
happens. Yeah, I work out how it can best be done, right, but it always
works out. It’s like having a Galacticredit card which keeps on working
though you never send off the cheques. And then whenever I stop and think
- why did I want to do something? – how did I work out how to do it? – I
get a very strong desire just to stop thinking about it. Like I have now.
It’s a big effort to talk about it.”
Zaphod paused for a while. For a while there was silence. Then he
frowned and said, “Last night I was worrying about this again. About the
fact that part of my mind just didn’t seem to work properly. Then it
occurred to me that the way it seemed was that someone else was using my
mind to have good ideas with, without telling me about it. I put the two
ideas together and decided that maybe that somebody had locked off part of
my mind for that purpose, which was why I couldn’t use it. I wondered if
there was a way I could check.
“I went to the ship’s medical bay and plugged myself into the
encephelographic screen. I went through every major screening test on both
my heads – all the tests I had to go through under government medical
officers before my nomination for Presidency could be properly ratified.
They showed up nothing. Nothing unexpected at least. They showed that I
was clever, imaginative, irresponsible, untrustworthy, extrovert, nothing
you couldn’t have guessed. And no other anomalies. So I started inventing
further tests, completely at random. Nothing. Then I tried superimposing
the results from one head on top of the results from the other head. Still
nothing. Finally I got silly, because I’d given it all up as nothing more
than an attack of paranoia. Last thing I did before I packed it in was
take the superimposed picture and look at it through a green filter. You
remember I was always superstitious about the color green when I was a
kid? I always wanted to be a pilot on one of the trading scouts?”
Ford nodded.
“And there it was,” said Zaphod, “clear as day. A whole section in
the middle of both brains that related only to each other and not to
anything else around them. Some bastard had cauterized all the synapses
and electronically traumatised those two lumps of cerebellum.”
Ford stared at him, aghast. Trillian had turned white.
“Somebody did that to you?” whispered Ford.
“Yeah.”
“But have you any idea who? Or why?”
“Why? I can only guess. But I do know who the bastard was.”
“You know? How do you know?”
“Because they left their initials burnt into the cauterized synapses.
They left them there for me to see.”
Ford stared at him in horror and felt his skin begin to crawl.
“Initials? Burnt into your brain?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, what were they, for God’s sake?”
Zaphod looked at him in silence again for a moment. Then he looked
away.
“Z.B.,” he said.
At that moment a steel shutter slammed down behind them and gas
started to pour into the chamber.
“I’ll tell you about it later,” choked Zaphod as all three passed
out.

21

On the surface of Magrathea Arthur wandered about moodily.
Ford had thoughtfully left him his copy of The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to
the Galaxy to while away the time with. He pushed a few buttons at random.
The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is a very unevenly edited book
and contains many passages that simply seemed to its editors like a good
idea at the time.
One of these (the one Arthur now came across) supposedly relates the
experiences of one Veet Voojagig, a quiet young student at the University
of Maximegalon, who pursued a brilliant academic career studying ancient
philology, transformational ethics and the wave harmonic theory of
historical perception, and then, after a night of drinking Pan Galactic
Gargle Blasters with Zaphod Beeblebrox, became increasingly obsessed with
the problem of what had happened to all the biros he’d bought over the
past few years.
There followed a long period of painstaking research during which he
visited all the major centres of biro loss throughout the galaxy and
eventually came up with a quaint little theory which quite caught the
public imagination at the time. Somewhere in the cosmos, he said, along
with all the planets inhabited by humanoids, reptiloids, fishoids, walking
treeoids and superintelligent shades of the colour blue, there was also a
planet entirely given over to biro life forms. And it was to this planet
that unattended biros would make their way, slipping away quietly through
wormholes in space to a world where they knew they could enjoy a uniquely
biroid lifestyle, responding to highly biro-oriented stimuli, and
generally leading the biro equivalent of the good life.
And as theories go this was all very fine and pleasant until Veet
Voojagig suddenly claimed to have found this planet, and to have worked
there for a while driving a limousine for a family of cheap green
retractables, whereupon he was taken away, locked up, wrote a book, and
was finally sent into tax exile, which is the usual fate reserved for
those who are determined to make a fool of themselves in public.
When one day an expedition was sent to the spatial coordinates that
Voojagig had claimed for this planet they discovered only a small asteroid
inhabited by a solitary old man who claimed repeatedly that nothing was
true, though he was later discovered to be lying.
There did, however, remain the question of both the mysterious 60,000
Altairan dollars paid yearly into his Brantisvogan bank account, and of
course Zaphod Beeblebrox’s highly profitable second-hand biro business.
Arthur read this, and put the book down.
The robot still sat there, completely inert.
Arthur got up and walked to the top of the crater. He walked around
the crater. He watched two suns set magnificently over Magrathea.
He went back down into the crater. He woke the robot up because even
a manically depressed robot is better to talk to than nobody.
“Night’s falling,” he said. “Look robot, the stars are coming out.”
From the heart of a dark nebula it is possible to see very few stars,
and only very faintly, but they were there to be seen.
The robot obediently looked at them, then looked back.
“I know,” he said. “Wretched isn’t it?”
“But that sunset! I’ve never seen anything like it in my wildest
dreams… the two suns! It was like mountains of fire boiling into space.”
“I’ve seen it,” said Marvin. “It’s rubbish.”
“We only ever had the one sun at home,” persevered Arthur, “I came
from a planet called Earth you know.”
“I know,” said Marvin, “you keep going on about it. It sounds awful.”
“Ah no, it was a beautiful place.”
“Did it have oceans?”
“Oh yes,” said Arthur with a sigh, “great wide rolling blue
oceans…”
“Can’t bear oceans,” said Marvin.
“Tell me,” inquired Arthur, “do you get on well with other robots?”
“Hate them,” said Marvin. “Where are you going?”
Arthur couldn’t bear any more. He had got up again.
“I think I’ll just take another walk,” he said.
“Don’t blame you,” said Marvin and counted five hundred and
ninety-seven thousand million sheep before falling asleep again a second
later.
Arthur slapped his arms about himself to try and get his circulation
a little more enthusiastic about its job. He trudged back up the wall of
the crater.
Because the atmosphere was so thin and because there was no moon,
nightfall was very rapid and it was by now very dark. Because of this,
Arthur practically walked into the old man before he noticed him.

22

He was standing with his back to Arthur watching the very last
glimmers of light sink into blackness behind the horizon. He was tallish,
elderly and dressed in a single long grey robe. When he turned his face
was thin and distinguished, careworn but not unkind, the sort of face you
would happily bank with. But he didn’t turn yet, not even to react to
Arthur’s yelp of surprise.
Eventually the last rays of the sun had vanished completely, and he
turned. His face was still illuminated from somewhere, and when Arthur
looked for the source of the light he saw that a few yards away stood a
small craft of some kind – a small hovercraft, Arthur guessed. It shed a
dim pool of light around it.
The man looked at Arthur, sadly it seemed.
“You choose a cold night to visit our dead planet,” he said.
“Who… who are you?” stammered Arthur.
The man looked away. Again a kind of sadness seemed to cross his
face.
“My name is not important,” he said.
He seemed to have something on his mind. Conversation was clearly
something he felt he didn’t have to rush at. Arthur felt awkward.
“I… er… you startled me…” he said, lamely.
The man looked round to him again and slightly raised his eyebrows.
“Hmmmm?” he said.
“I said you startled me.”
“Do not be alarmed, I will not harm you.”
Arthur frowned at him. “But you shot at us! There were missiles…”
he said.
The man chuckled slightly.
“An automatic system,” he said and gave a small sigh. “Ancient
computers ranged in the bowels of the planet tick away the dark millennia,
and the ages hang heavy on their dusty data banks. I think they take the
occasional pot shot to relieve the monotony.”
He looked gravely at Arthur and said, “I’m a great fan of science you
know.”
“Oh… er, really?” said Arthur, who was beginning to find the man’s
curious, kindly manner disconcerting.
“Oh, yes,” said the old man, and simply stopped talking again.
“Ah,” said Arthur, “er…” He had an odd felling of being like a man
in the act of adultery who is surprised when the woman’s husband wanders
into the room, changes his trousers, passes a few idle remarks about the
weather and leaves again.
“You seem ill at ease,” said the old man with polite concern.
“Er, no… well, yes. Actually you see, we weren’t really expecting
to find anybody about in fact. I sort of gathered that you were all dead
or something…”
“Dead?” said the old man. “Good gracious no, we have but slept.”
“Slept?” said Arthur incredulously.
“Yes, through the economic recession you see,” said the old man,
apparently unconcerned about whether Arthur understood a word he was
talking about or not.
“Er, economic recession?”
“Well you see, five million years ago the Galactic economy collapsed,
and seeing that custom-made planets are something of a luxury commodity
you see…”
He paused and looked at Arthur.
“You know we built planets do you?” he asked solemnly.
“Well yes,” said Arthur, “I’d sort of gathered…”
“Fascinating trade,” said the old man, and a wistful look came into
his eyes, “doing the coastlines was always my favourite. Used to have
endless fun doing the little bits in fjords… so anyway,” he said trying
to find his thread again, “the recession came and we decided it would save
us a lot of bother if we just slept through it. So we programmed the
computers to revive us when it was all over.”
The man stifled a very slight yawn and continued.
“The computers were index linked to the Galactic stock market prices
you see, so that we’d all be revived when everybody else had rebuilt the
economy enough to afford our rather expensive services.”
Arthur, a regular Guardian reader, was deeply shocked at this.
“That’s a pretty unpleasant way to behave isn’t it?”
“Is it?” asked the old man mildly. “I’m sorry, I’m a bit out of
touch.”
He pointed down into the crater.
“Is that robot yours?” he said.
“No,” came a thin metallic voice from the crater, “I’m mine.”
“If you’d call it a robot,” muttered Arthur. “It’s more a sort of
electronic sulking machine.”
“Bring it,” said the old man. Arthur was quite surprised to hear a
note of decision suddenly present in the old man’s voice. He called to
Marvin who crawled up the slope making a big show of being lame, which he
wasn’t.
“On second thoughts,” said the old man, “leave it here. You must come
with me. Great things are afoot.” He turned towards his craft which,
though no apparent signal had been given, now drifted quietly towards them
through the dark.
Arthur looked down at Marvin, who now made an equally big show of
turning round laboriously and trudging off down into the crater again
muttering sour nothings to himself.
“Come,” called the old man, “come now or you will be late.”
“Late?” said Arthur. “What for?”
“What is your name, human?”
“Dent. Arthur Dent,” said Arthur.
“Late, as in the late Dentarthurdent,” said the old man, sternly.
“It’s a sort of threat you see.” Another wistful look came into his tired
old eyes. “I’ve never been very good at them myself, but I’m told they can
be very effective.”
Arthur blinked at him.
“What an extraordinary person,” he muttered to himself.
“I beg your pardon?” said the old man.
“Oh nothing, I’m sorry,” said Arthur in embarrassment. “Alright,
where do we go?”
“In my aircar,” said the old man motioning Arthur to get into the
craft which had settled silently next to them. “We are going deep into the
bowels of the planet where even now our race is being revived from its
five-million-year slumber. Magrathea awakes.”
Arthur shivered involuntarily as he seated himself next to the old
man. The strangeness of it, the silent bobbing movement of the craft as it
soared into the night sky quite unsettled him.
He looked at the old man, his face illuminated by the dull glow of
tiny lights on the instrument panel.
“Excuse me,” he said to him, “what is your name by the way?”
“My name?” said the old man, and the same distant sadness came into
his face again. He paused. “My name,” he said, “… is Slartibartfast.”
Arthur practically choked.
“I beg your pardon?” he spluttered.
“Slartibartfast,” repeated the old man quietly.
“Slartibartfast?”
The old man looked at him gravely.
“I said it wasn’t important,” he said.
The aircar sailed through the night.

23

It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what
they seem. For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that
he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much -
the wheel, New York, wars and so on – whilst all the dolphins had ever
done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the
dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man
- for precisely the same reasons.
Curiously enough, the dolphins had long known of the impending
destruction of the planet Earth and had made many attempts to alert
mankind of the danger; but most of their communications were
misinterpreted as amusing attempts to punch footballs or whistle for
tidbits, so they eventually gave up and left the Earth by their own means
shortly before the Vogons arrived.
The last ever dolphin message was misinterpreted as a surprisingly
sophisticated attempt to do a double-backwardssomersault through a hoop
whilst whistling the “Star Sprangled Banner”, but in fact the message was
this: So long and thanks for all the fish.
In fact there was only one species on the planet more intelligent
than dolphins, and they spent a lot of their time in behavioural research
laboratories running round inside wheels and conducting frighteningly
elegant and subtle experiments on man. The fact that once again man
completely misinterpreted this relationship was entirely according to
these creatures’ plans.

24

Silently the aircar coasted through the cold darkness, a single soft
glow of light that was utterly alone in the deep Magrathean night. It sped
swiftly. Arthur’s companion seemed sunk in his own thoughts, and when
Arthur tried on a couple of occasions to engage him in conversation again
he would simply reply by asking if he was comfortable enough, and then
left it at that.
Arthur tried to gauge the speed at which they were travelling, but
the blackness outside was absolute and he was denied any reference points.
The sense of motion was so soft and slight he could almost believe they
were hardly moving at all.
Then a tiny glow of light appeared in the far distance and within
seconds had grown so much in size that Arthur realized it was travelling
towards them at a colossal speed, and he tried to make out what sort of
craft it might be. He peered at it, but was unable to discern any clear
shape, and suddenly gasped in alarm as the aircraft dipped sharply and
headed downwards in what seemed certain to be a collision course. Their
relative velocity seemed unbelievable, and Arthur had hardly time to draw
breath before it was all over. The next thing he was aware of was an
insane silver blur that seemed to surround him. He twisted his head
sharply round and saw a small black point dwindling rapidly in the
distance behind them, and it took him several seconds to realize what had
happened.
They had plunged into a tunnel in the ground. The colossal speed had
been their own relative to the glow of light which was a stationary hole
in the ground, the mouth of the tunnel. The insane blur of silver was the
circular wall of the tunnel down which they were shooting, apparently at
several hundred miles an hour.
He closed his eyes in terror.
After a length of time which he made no attempt to judge, he sensed a
slight subsidence in their speed and some while later became aware that
they were gradually gliding to a gentle halt.
He opened his eyes again. They were still in the silver tunnel,
threading and weaving their way through what appeared to be a crisscross
warren of converging tunnels. When they finally stopped it was in a small
chamber of curved steel. Several tunnels also had their terminus here, and
at the farther end of the chamber Arthur could see a large circle of dim
irritating light. It was irritating because it played tricks with the
eyes, it was impossible to focus on it properly or tell how near or far it
was. Arthur guessed (quite wrongly) that it might be ultra violet.
Slartibartfast turned and regarded Arthur with his solemn old eyes.
“Earthman,” he said, “we are now deep in the heart of Magrathea.”
“How did you know I was an Earthman?” demanded Arthur.
“These things will become clear to you,” said the old man gently, “at
least,” he added with slight doubt in his voice, “clearer than they are at
the moment.”
He continued: “I should warn you that the chamber we are about to
pass into does not literally exist within our planet. It is a little
too… large. We are about to pass through a gateway into a vast tract of
hyperspace. It may disturb you.”
Arthur made nervous noises.
Slartibartfast touched a button and added, not entirely reassuringly.
“It scares the willies out of me. Hold tight.”
The car shot forward straight into the circle of light, and suddenly
Arthur had a fairly clear idea of what infinity looked like.
It wasn’t infinity in fact. Infinity itself looks flat and
uninteresting. Looking up into the night sky is looking into infinity -
distance is incomprehensible and therefore meaningless. The chamber into
which the aircar emerged was anything but infinite, it was just very very
big, so that it gave the impression of infinity far better than infinity
itself.
Arthur’s senses bobbed and span, as, travelling at the immense speed
he knew the aircar attained, they climbed slowly through the open air
leaving the gateway through which they had passed an invisible pinprick in
the shimmering wall behind them.
The wall.
The wall defied the imagination – seduced it and defeated it. The
wall was so paralysingly vast and sheer that its top, bottom and sides
passed away beyond the reach of sight. The mere shock of vertigo could
kill a man.
The wall appeared perfectly flat. It would take the finest laser
measuring equipment to detect that as it climbed, apparently to infinity,
as it dropped dizzily away, as it planed out to either side, it also
curved. It met itself again thirteen light seconds away. In other words
the wall formed the inside of a hollow sphere, a sphere over three million
miles across and flooded with unimaginable light.
“Welcome,” said Slartibartfast as the tiny speck that was the aircar,
travelling now at three times the speed of sound, crept imperceptibly
forward into the mindboggling space, “welcome,” he said, “to our factory
floor.”
Arthur stared about him in a kind of wonderful horror. Ranged away
before them, at distances he could neither judge nor even guess at, were a
series of curious suspensions, delicate traceries of metal and light hung
about shadowy spherical shapes that hung in the space.
“This,” said Slartibartfast, “is where we make most of our planets
you see.”
“You mean,” said Arthur, trying to form the words, “you mean you’re
starting it all up again now?”
“No no, good heavens no,” exclaimed the old man, “no, the Galaxy
isn’t nearly rich enough to support us yet. No, we’ve been awakened to
perform just one extraordinary commission for very… special clients from
another dimension. It may interest you… there in the distance in front
of us.”
Arthur followed the old man’s finger, till he was able to pick out
the floating structure he was pointing out. It was indeed the only one of
the many structures that betrayed any sign of activity about it, though
this was more a sublimal impression than anything one could put one’s
finger on.
At the moment however a flash of light arced through the structure
and revealed in stark relief the patterns that were formed on the dark
sphere within. Patterns that Arthur knew, rough blobby shapes that were as
familiar to him as the shapes of words, part of the furniture of his mind.
For a few seconds he sat in stunned silence as the images rushed around
his mind and tried to find somewhere to settle down and make sense.
Part of his brain told him that he knew perfectly well what he was
looking at and what the shapes represented whilst another quite sensibly
refused to countenance the idea and abdicated responsibility for any
further thinking in that direction.
The flash came again, and this time there could be no doubt.
“The Earth…” whispered Arthur.
“Well, the Earth Mark Two in fact,” said Slartibartfast cheerfully.
“We’re making a copy from our original blueprints.”
There was a pause.
“Are you trying to tell me,” said Arthur, slowly and with control,
“that you originally… made the Earth?”
“Oh yes,” said Slartibartfast. “Did you ever go to a place… I think
it was called Norway?”
“No,” said Arthur, “no, I didn’t.”
“Pity,” said Slartibartfast, “that was one of mine. Won an award you
know. Lovely crinkly edges. I was most upset to hear about its
destruction.”
“You were upset!”
“Yes. Five minutes later and it wouldn’t have mattered so much. It
was a quite shocking cock-up.”
“Huh?” said Arthur.
“The mice were furious.”
“The mice were furious?”
“Oh yes,” said the old man mildly.
“Yes well so I expect were the dogs and cats and duckbilled
platypuses, but…”
“Ah, but they hadn’t paid for it you see, had they?”
“Look,” said Arthur, “would it save you a lot of time if I just gave
up and went mad now?”
For a while the aircar flew on in awkward silence. Then the old man
tried patiently to explain.
“Earthman, the planet you lived on was commissioned, paid for, and
run by mice. It was destroyed five minutes before the completion of the
purpose for which it was built, and we’ve got to build another one.”
Only one word registered with Arthur.
“Mice?” he said.
“Indeed Earthman.”
“Look, sorry – are we talking about the little white furry things
with the cheese fixation and women standing on tables screaming in early
sixties sit coms?”
Slartibartfast coughed politely.
“Earthman,” he said, “it is sometimes hard to follow your mode of
speech. Remember I have been asleep inside this planet of Magrathea for
five million years and know little of these early sixties sit coms of
which you speak. These creatures you call mice, you see, they are not
quite as they appear. They are merely the protrusion into our dimension of
vast hyperintelligent pandimensional beings. The whole business with the
cheese and the squeaking is just a front.”
The old man paused, and with a sympathetic frown continued.
“They’ve been experimenting on you I’m afraid.”
Arthur thought about this for a second, and then his face cleared.
“Ah no,” he said, “I see the source of the misunderstanding now. No,
look you see, what happened was that we used to do experiments on them.
They were often used in behavioural research, Pavlov and all that sort of
stuff. So what happened was hat the mice would be set all sorts of tests,
learning to ring bells, run around mazes and things so that the whole
nature of the learning process could be examined. From our observations of
their behaviour we were able to learn all sorts of things about our
own…”
Arthur’s voice tailed off.
“Such subtlety…” said Slartibartfast, “one has to admire it.”
“What?” said Arthur.
“How better to disguise their real natures, and how better to guide
your thinking. Suddenly running down a maze the wrong way, eating the
wrong bit of cheese, unexpectedly dropping dead of myxomatosis, – if it’s
finely calculated the cumulative effect is enormous.”
He paused for effect.
“You see, Earthman, they really are particularly clever
hyperintelligent pan-dimensional beings. Your planet and people have
formed the matrix of an organic computer running a tenmillion-year
research programme…
“Let me tell you the whole story. It’ll take a little time.”
“Time,” said Arthur weakly, “is not currently one of my problems.”

25

There are of course many problems connected with life, of which some
of the most popular are Why are people born? Why do they die? Why do they
want to spend so much of the intervening time wearing digital watches?
Many many millions of years ago a race of hyperintelligent
pandimensional beings (whose physical manifestation in their own
pan-dimensional universe is not dissimilar to our own) got so fed up with
the constant bickering about the meaning of life which used to interrupt
their favourite pastime of Brockian Ultra Cricket (a curious game which
involved suddenly hitting people for no readily apparent reason and then
running away) that they decided to sit down and solve their problems once
and for all.
And to this end they built themselves a stupendous super computer
which was so amazingly intelligent that even before the data banks had
been connected up it had started from I think therefore I am and got as
far as the existence of rice pudding and income tax before anyone managed
to turn it off.
It was the size of a small city.
Its main console was installed in a specially designed executive
office, mounted on an enormous executive desk of finest ultramahagony
topped with rich ultrared leather. The dark carpeting was discreetly
sumptuous, exotic pot plants and tastefully engraved prints of the
principal computer programmers and their families were deployed liberally
about the room, and stately windows looked out upon a tree-lined public
square.
On the day of the Great On-Turning two soberly dressed programmers
with brief cases arrived and were shown discreetly into the office. They
were aware that this day they would represent their entire race in its
greatest moment, but they conducted themselves calmly and quietly as they
seated themselves deferentially before the desk, opened their brief cases
and took out their leather-bound notebooks.
Their names were Lunkwill and Fook.
For a few moments they sat in respectful silence, then, after
exchanging a quiet glance with Fook, Lunkwill leaned forward and touched a
small black panel.
The subtlest of hums indicated that the massive computer was now in
total active mode. After a pause it spoke to them in a voice rich resonant
and deep.
It said: “What is this great task for which I, Deep Thought, the
second greatest computer in the Universe of Time and Space have been
called into existence?”
Lunkwill and Fook glanced at each other in surprise.
“Your task, O Computer…” began Fook.
“No, wait a minute, this isn’t right,” said Lunkwill, worried. “We
distinctly designed this computer to be the greatest one ever and we’re
not making do with second best. Deep Thought,” he addressed the computer,
“are you not as we designed you to be, the greatest most powerful computer
in all time?”
“I described myself as the second greatest,” intoned Deep Thought,
“and such I am.”
Another worried look passed between the two programmers. Lunkwill
cleared his throat.
“There must be some mistake,” he said, “are you not a greatest
computer than the Milliard Gargantubrain which can count all the atoms in
a star in a millisecond?”
“The Milliard Gargantubrain?” said Deep Thought with unconcealed
contempt. “A mere abacus – mention it not.”
“And are you not,” said Fook leaning anxiously forward, “a greater
analyst than the Googleplex Star Thinker in the Seventh Galaxy of Light
and Ingenuity which can calculate the trajectory of every single dust
particle throughout a five-week Dangrabad Beta sand blizzard?”
“A five-week sand blizzard?” said Deep Thought haughtily. “You ask
this of me who have contemplated the very vectors of the atoms in the Big
Bang itself? Molest me not with this pocket calculator stuff.”
The two programmers sat in uncomfortable silence for a moment. Then
Lunkwill leaned forward again.
“But are you not,” he said, “a more fiendish disputant than the Great
Hyperlobic Omni-Cognate Neutron Wrangler of Ciceronicus 12, the Magic and
Indefatigable?”
“The Great Hyperlobic Omni-Cognate Neutron Wrangler,” said Deep
Thought thoroughly rolling the r’s, “could talk all four legs off an
Arcturan MegaDonkey – but only I could persuade it to go for a walk
afterwards.”
“Then what,” asked Fook, “is the problem?”
“There is no problem,” said Deep Thought with magnificent ringing
tones. “I am simply the second greatest computer in the Universe of Space
and Time.”
“But the second?” insisted Lunkwill. “Why do you keep saying the
second? You’re surely not thinking of the Multicorticoid Perspicutron
Titan Muller are you? Or the Pondermatic? Or the…”
Contemptuous lights flashed across the computer’s console.
“I spare not a single unit of thought on these cybernetic
simpletons!” he boomed. “I speak of none but the computer that is to come
after me!”
Fook was losing patience. He pushed his notebook aside and muttered,
“I think this is getting needlessly messianic.”
“You know nothing of future time,” pronounced Deep Thought, “and yet
in my teeming circuitry I can navigate the infinite delta streams of
future probability and see that there must one day come a computer whose
merest operational parameters I am not worthy to calculate, but which it
will be my fate eventually to design.”
Fook sighed heavily and glanced across to Lunkwill.
“Can we get on and ask the question?” he said.
Lunkwill motioned him to wait.
“What computer is this of which you speak?” he asked.
“I will speak of it no further in this present time,” said Deep
Thought. “Now. Ask what else of me you will that I may function. Speak.”
They shrugged at each other. Fook composed himself.
“O Deep Thought Computer,” he said, “the task we have designed you to
perform is this. We want you to tell us…” he paused, “…the Answer!”
“The answer?” said Deep Thought. “The answer to what?”
“Life!” urged Fook.
“The Universe!” said Lunkwill.
“Everything!” they said in chorus.
Deep Thought paused for a moment’s reflection.
“Tricky,” he said finally.
“But can you do it?”
Again, a significant pause.
“Yes,” said Deep Thought, “I can do it.”
“There is an answer?” said Fook with breathless excitement.”
“A simple answer?” added Lunkwill.
“Yes,” said Deep Thought. “Life, the Universe, and Everything. There
is an answer. But,” he added, “I’ll have to think about it.”
A sudden commotion destroyed the moment: the door flew open and two
angry men wearing the coarse faded-blue robes and belts of the Cruxwan
University burst into the room, thrusting aside the ineffectual flunkies
who tried to bar their way.
“We demand admission!” shouted the younger of the two men elbowing a
pretty young secretary in the throat.
“Come on,” shouted the older one, “you can’t keep us out!” He pushed
a junior programmer back through the door.
“We demand that you can’t keep us out!” bawled the younger one,
though he was now firmly inside the room and no further attempts were
being made to stop him.
“Who are you?” said Lunkwill, rising angrily from his seat. “What do
you want?”
“I am Majikthise!” announced the older one.
“And I demand that I am Vroomfondel!” shouted the younger one.
Majikthise turned on Vroomfondel. “It’s alright,” he explained
angrily, “you don’t need to demand that.”
“Alright!” bawled Vroomfondel banging on an nearby desk. “I am
Vroomfondel, and that is not a demand, that is a solid fact! What we
demand is solid facts!”
“No we don’t!” exclaimed Majikthise in irritation. “That is precisely
what we don’t demand!”
Scarcely pausing for breath, Vroomfondel shouted, “We don’t demand
solid facts! What we demand is a total absence of solid facts. I demand
that I may or may not be Vroomfondel!”
“But who the devil are you?” exclaimed an outraged Fook.
“We,” said Majikthise, “are Philosophers.”
“Though we may not be,” said Vroomfondel waving a warning finger at
the programmers.
“Yes we are,” insisted Majikthise. “We are quite definitely here as
representatives of the Amalgamated Union of Philosophers, Sages,
Luminaries and Other Thinking Persons, and we want this machine off, and
we want it off now!”
“What’s the problem?” said Lunkwill.
“I’ll tell you what the problem is mate,” said Majikthise,
“demarcation, that’s the problem!”
“We demand,” yelled Vroomfondel, “that demarcation may or may not be
the problem!”
“You just let the machines get on with the adding up,” warned
Majikthise, “and we’ll take care of the eternal verities thank you very
much. You want to check your legal position you do mate. Under law the
Quest for Ultimate Truth is quite clearly the inalienable prerogative of
your working thinkers. Any bloody machine goes and actually finds it and
we’re straight out of a job aren’t we? I mean what’s the use of our
sitting up half the night arguing that there may or may not be a God if
this machine only goes and gives us his bleeding phone number the next
morning?”
“That’s right!” shouted Vroomfondel, “we demand rigidly defined areas
of doubt and uncertainty!”
Suddenly a stentorian voice boomed across the room.
“Might I make an observation at this point?” inquired Deep Thought.
“We’ll go on strike!” yelled Vroomfondel.
“That’s right!” agreed Majikthise. “You’ll have a national
Philosopher’s strike on your hands!”
The hum level in the room suddenly increased as several ancillary
bass driver units, mounted in sedately carved and varnished cabinet
speakers around the room, cut in to give Deep Thought’s voice a little
more power.
“All I wanted to say,” bellowed the computer, “is that my circuits
are now irrevocably committed to calculating the answer to the Ultimate
Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything,” – he paused and satisfied
himself that he now had everyone’s attention, before continuing more
quietly, “but the programme will take me a little while to run.”
Fook glanced impatiently at his watch.
“How long?” he said.
“Seven and a half million years,” said Deep Thought.
Lunkwill and Fook blinked at each other.
“Seven and a half million years!..” they cried in chorus.
“Yes,” declaimed Deep Thought, “I said I’d have to think about it,
didn’t I? And it occurs to me that running a programme like this is bound
to create an enormous amount of popular publicity for the whole area of
philosophy in general. Everyone’s going to have their own theories about
what answer I’m eventually to come up with, and who better to capitalize
on that media market than you yourself? So long as you can keep
disagreeing with each other violently enough and slagging each other off
in the popular press, you can keep yourself on the gravy train for life.
How does that sound?”
The two philosophers gaped at him.
“Bloody hell,” said Majikthise, “now that is what I call thinking.
Here Vroomfondel, why do we never think of things like that?”
“Dunno,” said Vroomfondel in an awed whisper, “think our brains must
be too highly trained Majikthise.”
So saying, they turned on their heels and walked out of the door and
into a lifestyle beyond their wildest dreams.

26

“Yes, very salutary,” said Arthur, after Slartibartfast had related
the salient points of the story to him, “but I don’t understand what all
this has got to do with the Earth and mice and things.”
“That is but the first half of the story Earthman,” said the old man.
“If you would care to discover what happened seven and a half millions
later, on the great day of the Answer, allow me to invite you to my study
where you can experience the events yourself on our Sens-O-Tape records.
That is unless you would care to take a quick stroll on the surface of New
Earth. It’s only half completed I’m afraid – we haven’t even finished
burying the artificial dinosaur skeletons in the crust yet, then we have
the Tertiary and Quarternary Periods of the Cenozoic Era to lay down,
and…”
“No thank you,” said Arthur, “it wouldn’t be quite the same.”
“No,” said Slartibartfast, “it won’t be,” and he turned the aircar
round and headed back towards the mind-numbing wall.

27

Slartibartfast’s study was a total mess, like the results of an
explosion in a public library. The old man frowned as they stepped in.
“Terribly unfortunate,” he said, “a diode blew in one of the
life-support computers. When we tried to revive our cleaning staff we
discovered they’d been dead for nearly thirty thousand years. Who’s going
to clear away the bodies, that’s what I want to know. Look why don’t you
sit yourself down over there and let me plug you in?”
He gestured Arthur towards a chair which looked as if it had been
made out of the rib cage of a stegosaurus.
“It was made out of the rib cage of a stegosaurus,” explained the old
man as he pottered about fishing bits of wire out from under tottering
piles of paper and drawing instruments. “Here,” he said, “hold these,” and
passed a couple of stripped wire end to Arthur.
The instant he took hold of them a bird flew straight through him.
He was suspended in mid-air and totally invisible to himself. Beneath
him was a pretty treelined city square, and all around it as far as the
eye could see were white concrete buildings of airy spacious design but
somewhat the worse for wear – many were cracked and stained with rain.
Today however the sun was shining, a fresh breeze danced lightly through
the trees, and the odd sensation that all the buildings were quietly
humming was probably caused by the fact that the square and all the
streets around it were thronged with cheerful excited people. Somewhere a
band was playing, brightly coloured flags were fluttering in the breeze
and the spirit of carnival was in the air.
Arthur felt extraordinarily lonely stuck up in the air above it all
without so much as a body to his name, but before he had time to reflect
on this a voice rang out across the square and called for everyone’s
attention.
A man standing on a brightly dressed dais before the building which
clearly dominated the square was addressing the crowd over a Tannoy.
“O people waiting in the Shadow of Deep Thought!” he cried out.
“Honoured Descendants of Vroomfondel and Majikthise, the Greatest and Most
Truly Interesting Pundits the Universe has ever known… The Time of
Waiting is over!”
Wild cheers broke out amongst the crowd. Flags, streamers and wolf
whistles sailed through the air. The narrower streets looked rather like
centipedes rolled over on their backs and frantically waving their legs in
the air.
“Seven and a half million years our race has waited for this Great
and Hopefully Enlightening Day!” cried the cheer leader. “The Day of the
Answer!”
Hurrahs burst from the ecstatic crowd.
“Never again,” cried the man, “never again will we wake up in the
morning and think Who am I? What is my purpose in life? Does it really,
cosmically speaking, matter if I don’t get up and go to work? For today we
will finally learn once and for all the plain and simple answer to all
these nagging little problems of Life, the Universe and Everything!”
As the crowd erupted once again, Arthur found himself gliding through
the air and down towards one of the large stately windows on the first
floor of the building behind the dais from which the speaker was
addressing the crowd.
He experienced a moment’s panic as he sailed straight through towards
the window, which passed when a second or so later he found he had gone
right through the solid glass without apparently touching it.
No one in the room remarked on his peculiar arrival, which is hardly
surprising as he wasn’t there. He began to realize that the whole
experience was merely a recorded projection which knocked six-track
seventy-millimetre into a cocked hat.
The room was much as Slartibartfast had described it. In seven and a
half million years it had been well looked after and cleaned regularly
every century or so. The ultramahagony desk was worn at the edges, the
carpet a little faded now, but the large computer terminal sat in
sparkling glory on the desk’s leather top, as bright as if it had been
constructed yesterday.
Two severely dressed men sat respectfully before the terminal and
waited.
“The time is nearly upon us,” said one, and Arthur was surprised to
see a word suddenly materialize in thin air just by the man’s neck. The
word was Loonquawl, and it flashed a couple of times and the disappeared
again. Before Arthur was able to assimilate this the other man spoke and
the word Phouchg appeared by his neck.
“Seventy-five thousand generations ago, our ancestors set this
program in motion,” the second man said, “and in all that time we will be
the first to hear the computer speak.”
“An awesome prospect, Phouchg,” agreed the first man, and Arthur
suddenly realized that he was watching a recording with subtitles.
“We are the ones who will hear,” said Phouchg, “the answer to the
great question of Life!..”
“The Universe!..” said Loonquawl.
“And Everything!..”
“Shhh,” said Loonquawl with a slight gesture, “I think Deep Thought
is preparing to speak!”
There was a moment’s expectant pause whilst panels slowly came to
life on the front of the console. Lights flashed on and off experimentally
and settled down into a businesslike pattern. A soft low hum came from the
communication channel.
“Good morning,” said Deep Thought at last.
“Er… Good morning, O Deep Thought,” said Loonquawl nervously, “do
you have… er, that is…”
“An answer for you?” interrupted Deep Thought majestically. “Yes. I
have.”
The two men shivered with expectancy. Their waiting had not been in
vain.
“There really is one?” breathed Phouchg.
“There really is one,” confirmed Deep Thought.
“To Everything? To the great Question of Life, the Universe and
Everything?”
“Yes.”
Both of the men had been trained for this moment, their lives had
been a preparation for it, they had been selected at birth as those who
would witness the answer, but even so they found themselves gasping and
squirming like excited children.
“And you’re ready to give it to us?” urged Loonquawl.
“I am.”
“Now?”
“Now,” said Deep Thought.
They both licked their dry lips.
“Though I don’t think,” added Deep Thought, “that you’re going to
like it.”
“Doesn’t matter!” said Phouchg. “We must know it! Now!”
“Now?” inquired Deep Thought.
“Yes! Now…”
“Alright,” said the computer and settled into silence again. The two
men fidgeted. The tension was unbearable.
“You’re really not going to like it,” observed Deep Thought.
“Tell us!”
“Alright,” said Deep Thought. “The Answer to the Great Question…”
“Yes!..”
“Of Life, the Universe and Everything…” said Deep Thought.
“Yes!..”
“Is…” said Deep Thought, and paused.
“Yes!..”
“Is…”
“Yes!!!?..”
“Forty-two,” said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm.

28

It was a long time before anyone spoke.
Out of the corner of his eye Phouchg could see the sea of tense
expectant faces down in the square outside.
“We’re going to get lynched aren’t we?” he whispered.
“It was a tough assignment,” said Deep Thought mildly.
“Forty-two!” yelled Loonquawl. “Is that all you’ve got to show for
seven and a half million years’ work?”
“I checked it very thoroughly,” said the computer, “and that quite
definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quite honest with
you, is that you’ve never actually known what the question is.”
“But it was the Great Question! The Ultimate Question of Life, the
Universe and Everything!” howled Loonquawl.
“Yes,” said Deep Thought with the air of one who suffers fools
gladly, “but what actually is it?”
A slow stupefied silence crept over the men as they stared at the
computer and then at each other.
“Well, you know, it’s just Everything… Everything…” offered
Phouchg weakly.
“Exactly!” said Deep Thought. “So once you do know what the question
actually is, you’ll know what the answer means.”
“Oh terrific,” muttered Phouchg flinging aside his notebook and
wiping away a tiny tear.
“Look, alright, alright,” said Loonquawl, “can you just please tell
us the Question?”
“The Ultimate Question?”
“Yes!”
“Of Life, the Universe, and Everything?”
“Yes!”
Deep Thought pondered this for a moment.
“Tricky,” he said.
“But can you do it?” cried Loonquawl.
Deep Thought pondered this for another long moment.
Finally: “No,” he said firmly.
Both men collapsed on to their chairs in despair.
“But I’ll tell you who can,” said Deep Thought.
They both looked up sharply.
“Who?” “Tell us!”
Suddenly Arthur began to feel his apparently non-existent scalp begin
to crawl as he found himself moving slowly but inexorably forward towards
the console, but it was only a dramatic zoom on the part of whoever had
made the recording he assumed.
“I speak of none other than the computer that is to come after me,”
intoned Deep Thought, his voice regaining its accustomed declamatory
tones. “A computer whose merest operational parameters I am not worthy to
calculate – and yet I will design it for you. A computer which can
calculate the Question to the Ultimate Answer, a computer of such infinite
and subtle complexity that organic life itself shall form part of its
operational matrix. And you yourselves shall take on new forms and go down
into the computer to navigate its ten-million-year program! Yes! I shall
design this computer for you. And I shall name it also unto you. And it
shall be called… The Earth.”
Phouchg gaped at Deep Thought.
“What a dull name,” he said and great incisions appeared down the
length of his body. Loonquawl too suddenly sustained horrific gashed from
nowhere. The Computer console blotched and cracked, the walls flickered
and crumbled and the room crashed upwards into its own ceiling…
Slartibartfast was standing in front of Arthur holding the two wires.
“End of the tape,” he explained.

29

“Zaphod! Wake up!”
“Mmmmmwwwwwerrrrr?”
“Hey come on, wake up.”
“Just let me stick to what I’m good at, yeah?” muttered Zaphod and
rolled away from the voice back to sleep.
“Do you want me to kick you?” said Ford.
“Would it give you a lot of pleasure?” said Zaphod, blearily.
“No.”
“Nor me. So what’s the point? Stop bugging me.” Zaphod curled himself
up.
“He got a double dose of the gas,” said Trillian looking down at him,
“two windpipes.”
“And stop talking,” said Zaphod, “it’s hard enough trying to sleep
anyway. What’s the matter with the ground? It’s all cold and hard.”
“It’s gold,” said Ford.
With an amazingly balletic movement Zaphod was standing and scanning
the horizon, because that was how far the gold ground stretched in every
direction, perfectly smooth and solid. It gleamed like… it’s impossible
to say what it gleamed like because nothing in the Universe gleams in
quite the same way that a planet of solid gold does.
“Who put all that there?” yelped Zaphod, goggle-eyed.
“Don’t get excited,” said Ford, “it’s only a catalogue.”
“A who?”
“A catalogue,” said Trillian, “an illusion.”
“How can you say that?” cried Zaphod, falling to his hands and knees
and staring at the ground. He poked it and prodded it with his fingernail.
It was very heavy and very slightly soft – he could mark it with his
fingernail. It was very yellow and very shiny, and when he breathed on it
his breath evaporated off it in that very peculiar and special way that
breath evaporates off solid gold.
“Trillian and I came round a while ago,” said Ford. “We shouted and
yelled till somebody came and then carried on shouting and yelling till
they got fed up and put us in their planet catalogue to keep us busy till
they were ready to deal with us. This is all Sens-O-Tape.”
Zaphod stared at him bitterly.
“Ah, shit,” he said, “you wake me up from my own perfectly good dream
to show me somebody else’s.” He sat down in a huff.
“What’s that series of valleys over there?” he said.
“Hallmark,” said Ford. “We had a look.”
“We didn’t wake you earlier,” said Trillian. “The last planet was
knee deep in fish.”
“Fish?”
“Some people like the oddest things.”
“And before that,” said Ford, “we had platinum. Bit dull. We thought
you’d like to see this one though.”
Seas of light glared at them in one solid blaze wherever they looked.
“Very pretty,” said Zaphod petulantly.
In the sky a huge green catalogue number appeared. It flickered and
changed, and when they looked around again so had the land.
As with one voice they all went, “Yuch.”
The sea was purple. The beach they were on was composed of tiny
yellow and green pebbles – presumably terribly precious stones. The
mountains in the distance seemed soft and undulating with red peaks.
Nearby stood a solid silver beach table with a frilly mauve parasol and
silver tassles.
In the sky a huge sign appeared, replacing the catalogue number. It
said, Whatever your tastes, Magrathea can cater for you. We are not proud.
And five hundred entirely naked women dropped out of the sky on
parachutes.
In a moment the scene vanished and left them in a springtime meadow
full of cows.
“Ow!” said Zaphod. “My brains!”
“You want to talk about it?” said Ford.
“Yeah, OK,” said Zaphod, and all three sat down and ignored the
scenes that came and went around them.
“I figure this,” said Zaphod. “Whatever happened to my mind, I did
it. And I did it in such a way that it wouldn’t be detected by the
government screening tests. And I wasn’t to know anything about it myself.
Pretty crazy, right?”
The other two nodded in agreement.
“So I reckon, what’s so secret that I can’t let anybody know I know
it, not the Galactic Government, not even myself? And the answer is I
don’t know. Obviously. But I put a few things together and I can begin to
guess. When did I decide to run for President? Shortly after the death of
President Yooden Vranx. You remember Yooden, Ford?”
“Yeah,” said Ford, “he was that guy we met when we were kids, the
Arcturan captain. He was a gas. He gave us conkers when you bust your way
into his megafreighter. Said you were the most amazing kid he’d ever met.”
“What’s all this?” said Trillian.
“Ancient history,” said Ford, “when we were kids together on
Betelgeuse. The Arcturan megafreighters used to carry most of the bulky
trade between the Galactic Centre and the outlying regions The Betelgeuse
trading scouts used to find the markets and the Arcturans would supply
them. There was a lot of trouble with space pirates before they were wiped
out in the Dordellis wars, and the megafreighters had to be equipped with
the most fantastic defence shields known to Galactic science. They were
real brutes of ships, and huge. In orbit round a planet they would eclipse
the sun.
“One day, young Zaphod here decides to raid one. On a tri-jet scooter
designed for stratosphere work, a mere kid. I mean forget it, it was
crazier than a mad monkey. I went along for the ride because I’d got some
very safe money on him not doing it, and didn’t want him coming back with
fake evidence. So what happens? We got in his tri-jet which he had souped
up into something totally other, crossed three parsecs in a matter of
weeks, bust our way into a megafreighter I still don’t know how, marched
on to the bridge waving toy pistols and demanded conkers. A wilder thing I
have not known. Lost me a year’s pocket money. For what? Conkers.”
“The captain was this really amazing guy, Yooden Vranx,” said Zaphod.
“He gave us food, booze – stuff from really weird parts of the Galaxy -
lots of conkers of course, and we had just the most incredible time. Then
he teleported us back. Into the maximum security wing of Betelgeuse state
prison. He was a cool guy. Went on to become President of the Galaxy.”
Zaphod paused.
The scene around them was currently plunged into gloom. Dark mists
swirled round them and elephantine shapes lurked indistinctly in the
shadows. The air was occasionally rent with the sounds of illusory beings
murdering other illusory beings. Presumably enough people must have liked
this sort of thing to make it a paying proposition.
“Ford,” said Zaphod quietly.
“Yeah?”
“Just before Yooden died he came to see me.”
“What? You never told me.”
“No.”
“What did he say? What did he come to see you about?”
“He told me about the Heart of Gold. It was his idea that I should
steal it.”
“His idea?”
“Yeah,” said Zaphod, “and the only possible way of stealing it was to
be at the launching ceremony.”
Ford gaped at him in astonishment for a moment, and then roared with
laughter.
“Are you telling me,” he said, “that you set yourself up to become
President of the Galaxy just to steal that ship?”
“That’s it,” said Zaphod with the sort of grin that would get most
people locked away in a room with soft walls.
“But why?” said Ford. “What’s so important about having it?”
“Dunno,” said Zaphod, “I think if I’d consciously known what was so
important about it and what I would need it for it would have showed up on
the brain screening tests and I would never have passed. I think Yooden
told me a lot of things that are still locked away.”
“So you think you went and mucked about inside your own brain as a
result of Yooden talking to you?”
“He was a hell of a talker.”
“Yeah, but Zaphod old mate, you want to look after yourself you
know.”
Zaphod shrugged.
“I mean, don’t you have any inkling of the reasons for all this?”
asked Ford.
Zaphod thought hard about this and doubts seemed to cross his minds.
“No,” he said at last, “I don’t seem to be letting myself into any of
my secrets. Still,” he added on further reflection, “I can understand
that. I wouldn’t trust myself further than I could spit a rat.”
A moment later, the last planet in the catalogue vanished from
beneath them and the solid world resolved itself again.
They were sitting in a plush waiting room full of glass-top tables
and design awards.
A tall Magrathean man was standing in front of them.
“The mice will see you now,” he said.

30

“So there you have it,” said Slartibartfast, making a feeble and
perfunctory attempt to clear away some of the appalling mess of his study.
He picked up a paper from the top of a pile, but then couldn’t think of
anywhere else to put it, so he but it back on top of the original pile
which promptly fell over. “Deep Thought designed the Earth, we built it
and you lived on it.”
“And the Vogons came and destroyed it five minutes before the program
was completed,” added Arthur, not unbitterly.
“Yes,” said the old man, pausing to gaze hopelessly round the room.
“Ten million years of planning and work gone just like that. Ten million
years, Earthman… can you conceive of that kind of time span? A galactic
civilization could grow from a single worm five times over in that time.
Gone.” He paused.
“Well that’s bureaucracy for you,” he added.
“You know,” said Arthur thoughtfully, “all this explains a lot of
things. All through my life I’ve had this strange unaccountable feeling
that something was going on in the world, something big, even sinister,
and no one would tell me what it was.”
“No,” said the old man, “that’s just perfectly normal paranoia.
Everyone in the Universe has that.”
“Everyone?” said Arthur. “Well, if everyone has that perhaps it means
something! Perhaps somewhere outside the Universe we know…”
“Maybe. Who cares?” said Slartibartfast before Arthur got too
excited. “Perhaps I’m old and tired,” he continued, “but I always think
that the chances of finding out what really is going on are so absurdly
remote that the only thing to do is to say hang the sense of it and just
keep yourself occupied. Look at me: I design coastlines. I got an award
for Norway.”
He rummaged around in a pile of debris and pulled out a large perspex
block with his name on it and a model of Norway moulded into it.
“Where’s the sense in that?” he said. “None that I’ve been able to
make out. I’ve been doing fjords in all my life. For a fleeting moment
they become fashionable and I get a major award.”
He turned it over in his hands with a shrug and tossed it aside
carelessly, but not so carelessly that it didn’t land on something soft.
“In this replacement Earth we’re building they’ve given me Africa to
do and of course I’m doing it with all fjords again because I happen to
like them, and I’m old fashioned enough to think that they give a lovely
baroque feel to a continent. And they tell me it’s not equatorial enough.
Equatorial!” He gave a hollow laugh. “What does it matter? Science has
achieved some wonderful things of course, but I’d far rather be happy than
right any day.”
“And are you?”
“No. That’s where it all falls down of course.”
“Pity,” said Arthur with sympathy. “It sounded like quite a good
lifestyle otherwise.”
Somewhere on the wall a small white light flashed.
“Come,” said Slartibartfast, “you are to meet the mice. Your arrival
on the planet has caused considerable excitement. It has already been
hailed, so I gather, as the third most improbable event in the history of
the Universe.”
“What were the first two?”
“Oh, probably just coincidences,” said Slartibartfast carelessly. He
opened the door and stood waiting for Arthur to follow.
Arthur glanced around him once more, and then down at himself, at the
sweaty dishevelled clothes he had been lying in the mud in on Thursday
morning.
“I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle,” he
muttered to himself.
“I beg your pardon?” said the old man mildly.
“Oh nothing,” said Arthur, “only joking.”

31

It is of course well known that careless talk costs lives, but the
full scale of the problem is not always appreciated.
For instance, at the very moment that Arthur said “I seem to be
having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle,” a freak wormhole opened
up in the fabric of the space-time continuum and carried his words far far
back in time across almost infinite reaches of space to a distant Galaxy
where strange and warlike beings were poised on the brink of frightful
interstellar battle.
The two opposing leaders were meeting for the last time.
A dreadful silence fell across the conference table as the commander
of the Vl’hurgs, resplendent in his black jewelled battle shorts, gazed
levelly at the G’Gugvuntt leader squatting opposite him in a cloud of
green sweet-smelling steam, and, with a million sleek and horribly
beweaponed star cruisers poised to unleash electric death at his single
word of command, challenged the vile creature to take back what it had
said about his mother.
The creature stirred in his sickly broiling vapour, and at that very
moment the words I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my
lifestyle drifted across the conference table.
Unfortunately, in the Vl’hurg tongue this was the most dreadful
insult imaginable, and there was nothing for it but to wage terrible war
for centuries.
Eventually of course, after their Galaxy had been decimated over a
few thousand years, it was realized that the whole thing had been a
ghastly mistake, and so the two opposing battle fleets settled their few
remaining differences in order to launch a joint attack on our own Galaxy
- now positively identified as the source of the offending remark.
For thousands more years the mighty ships tore across the empty
wastes of space and finally dived screaming on to the first planet they
came across – which happened to be the Earth – where due to a terrible
miscalculation of scale the entire battle fleet was accidentally swallowed
by a small dog.
Those who study the complex interplay of cause and effect in the
history of the Universe say that this sort of thing is going on all the
time, but that we are powerless to prevent it.
“It’s just life,” they say.
A short aircar trip brought Arthur and the old Magrathean to a
doorway. They left the car and went through the door into a waiting room
full of glass-topped tables and perspex awards. Almost immediately, a
light flashed above the door at the other side of the room and they
entered.
“Arthur! You’re safe!” a voice cried.
“Am I?” said Arthur, rather startled. “Oh good.”
The lighting was rather subdued and it took him a moment or so to see
Ford, Trillian and Zaphod sitting round a large table beautifully decked
out with exotic dishes, strange sweetmeats and bizarre fruits. They were
stuffing their faces.
“What happened to you?” demanded Arthur.
“Well,” said Zaphod, attacking a boneful of grilled muscle, “our
guests here have been gassing us and zapping our minds and being generally
weird and have now given us a rather nice meal to make it up to us. Here,”
he said hoiking out a lump of evil smelling meat from a bowl, “have some
Vegan Rhino’s cutlet. It’s delicious if you happen to like that sort of
thing.”
“Hosts?” said Arthur. “What hosts? I don’t see any…”
A small voice said, “Welcome to lunch, Earth creature.”
Arthur glanced around and suddenly yelped.
“Ugh!” he said. “There are mice on the table!”
There was an awkward silence as everyone looked pointedly at Arthur.
He was busy staring at two white mice sitting in what looked like
whisky glasses on the table. He heard the silence and glanced around at
everyone.
“Oh!” he said, with sudden realization. “Oh, I’m sorry, I wasn’t
quite prepared for…”
“Let me introduce you,” said Trillian. “Arthur this is Benji mouse.”
“Hi,” said one of the mice. His whiskers stroked what must have been
a touch sensitive panel on the inside of the whisky-glass like affair, and
it moved forward slightly.
“And this is Frankie mouse.”
The other mouse said, “Pleased to meet you,” and did likewise.
Arthur gaped.
“But aren’t they…”
“Yes,” said Trillian, “they are the mice I brought with me from the
Earth.”
She looked him in the eye and Arthur thought he detected the tiniest
resigned shrug.
“Could you pass me that bowl of grated Arcturan Megadonkey?” she
said.
Slartibartfast coughed politely.
“Er, excuse me,” he said.
“Yes, thank you Slartibartfast,” said Benji mouse sharply, “you may
go.”
“What? Oh… er, very well,” said the old man, slightly taken aback,
“I’ll just go and get on with some of my fjords then.”
“Ah, well in fact that won’t be necessary,” said Frankie mouse. “It
looks very much as if we won’t be needing the new Earth any longer.” He
swivelled his pink little eyes. “Not now that we have found a native of
the planet who was there seconds before it was destroyed.”
“What?” cried Slartibartfast, aghast. “You can’t mean that! I’ve got
a thousand glaciers poised and ready to roll over Africa!”
“Well perhaps you can take a quick skiing holiday before you
dismantle them,” said Frankie, acidly.
“Skiing holiday!” cried the old man. “Those glaciers are works of
art! Elegantly sculptured contours, soaring pinnacles of ice, deep
majestic ravines! It would be sacrilege to go skiing on high art!”
“Thank you Slartibartfast,” said Benji firmly. “That will be all.”
“Yes sir,” said the old man coldly, “thank you very much. Well,
goodbye Earthman,” he said to Arthur, “hope the lifestyle comes together.”
With a brief nod to the rest of the company he turned and walked
sadly out of the room.
Arthur stared after him not knowing what to say.
“Now,” said Benji mouse, “to business.”
Ford and Zaphod clinked their glasses together.
“To business!” they said.
“I beg your pardon?” said Benji.
Ford looked round.
“Sorry, I thought you were proposing a toast,” he said.
The two mice scuttled impatiently around in their glass transports.
Finally they composed themselves, and Benji moved forward to address
Arthur.
“Now, Earth creature,” he said, “the situation we have in effect is
this. We have, as you know, been more or less running your planet for the
last ten million years in order to find this wretched thing called the
Ultimate Question.”
“Why?” said Arthur, sharply.
“No – we already thought of that one,” said Frankie interrupting,
“but it doesn’t fit the answer. Why? – Forty-Two… you see, it doesn’t
work.”
“No,” said Arthur, “I mean why have you been doing it?”
“Oh, I see,” said Frankie. “Well, eventually just habit I think, to
be brutally honest. And this is more or less the point – we’re sick to the
teeth with the whole thing, and the prospect of doing it all over again on
account of those whinnet-ridden Vogons quite frankly gives me the
screaming heeby jeebies, you know what I mean? It was by the merest lucky
chance that Benji and I finished our particular job and left the planet
early for a quick holiday, and have since manipulated our way back to
Magrathea by the good offices of your friends.”
“Magrathea is a gateway back to our own dimension,” put in Benji.
“Since when,” continued his murine colleague, “we have had an offer
of a quite enormously fat contract to do the 5D chat show and lecture
circuit back in our own dimensional neck of the woods, and we’re very much
inclined to take it.”
“I would, wouldn’t you Ford?” said Zaphod promptingly.
“Oh yes,” said Ford, “jump at it, like a shot.”
Arthur glanced at them, wondering what all this was leading up to.
“But we’ve got to have a product you see,” said Frankie, “I mean
ideally we still need the Ultimate Question in some form or other.”
Zaphod leaned forward to Arthur.
“You see,” he said, “if they’re just sitting there in the studio
looking very relaxed and, you know, just mentioning that they happen to
know the Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything, and then eventually
have to admit that in fact it’s Forty-two, then the show’s probably quite
short. No follow-up, you see.”
“We have to have something that sounds good,” said Benji.
“Something that sounds good?” exclaimed Arthur. “An Ultimate Question
that sounds good? From a couple of mice?”
The mice bristled.
“Well, I mean, yes idealism, yes the dignity of pure research, yes
the pursuit of truth in all its forms, but there comes a point I’m afraid
where you begin to suspect that if there’s any real truth, it’s that the
entire multi-dimensional infinity of the Universe is almost certainly
being run by a bunch of maniacs. And if it comes to a choice between
spending yet another ten million years finding that out, and on the other
hand just taking the money and running, then I for one could do with the
exercise,” said Frankie.
“But…” started Arthur, hopelessly.
“Hey, will you get this, Earthman,” interrupted Zaphod. “You are a
last generation product of that computer matrix, right, and you were there
right up to the moment your planet got the finger, yeah?”
“Er…”
“So your brain was an organic part of the penultimate configuration
of the computer programme,” said Ford, rather lucidly he thought.
“Right?” said Zaphod.
“Well,” said Arthur doubtfully. He wasn’t aware of ever having felt
an organic part of anything. He had always seen this as one of his
problems.
“In other words,” said Benji, steering his curious little vehicle
right over to Arthur, “there’s a good chance that the structure of the
question is encoded in the structure of your brain – so we want to buy it
off you.”
“What, the question?” said Arthur.
“Yes,” said Ford and Trillian.
“For lots of money,” said Zaphod.
“No, no,” said Frankie, “it’s the brain we want to buy.”
“What!”
“I thought you said you could just read his brain electronically,”
protested Ford.
“Oh yes,” said Frankie, “but we’d have to get it out first. It’s got
to be prepared.”
“Treated,” said Benji.
“Diced.”
“Thank you,” shouted Arthur, tipping up his chair and backing away
from the table in horror.
“It could always be replaced,” said Benji reasonably, “if you think
it’s important.”
“Yes, an electronic brain,” said Frankie, “a simple one would
suffice.”
“A simple one!” wailed Arthur.
“Yeah,” said Zaphod with a sudden evil grin, “you’d just have to
program it to say What? and I don’t understand and Where’s the tea? -
who’d know the difference?”
“What?” cried Arthur, backing away still further.
“See what I mean?” said Zaphod and howled with pain because of
something that Trillian did at that moment.
“I’d notice the difference,” said Arthur.
“No you wouldn’t,” said Frankie mouse, “you’d be programmed not to.”
Ford made for the door.
“Look, I’m sorry, mice old lads,” he said. “I don’t think we’ve got a
deal.”
“I rather think we have to have a deal,” said the mice in chorus, all
the charm vanishing fro their piping little voices in an instant. With a
tiny whining shriek their two glass transports lifted themselves off the
table, and swung through the air towards Arthur, who stumbled further
backwards into a blind corner, utterly unable to cope or think of
anything.
Trillian grabbed him desperately by the arm and tried to drag him
towards the door, which Ford and Zaphod were struggling to open, but
Arthur was dead weight – he seemed hypnotized by the airborne rodents
swooping towards him.
She screamed at him, but he just gaped.
With one more yank, Ford and Zaphod got the door open. On the other
side of it was a small pack of rather ugly men who they could only assume
were the heavy mob of Magrathea. Not only were they ugly themselves, but
the medical equipment they carried with them was also far from pretty.
They charged.
So – Arthur was about to have his head cut open, Trillian was unable
to help him, and Ford and Zaphod were about to be set upon by several
thugs a great deal heavier and more sharply armed than they were.
All in all it was extremely fortunate that at that moment every alarm
on the planet burst into an earsplitting din.

32

“Emergency! Emergency!” blared the klaxons throughout Magrathea.
“Hostile ship has landed on planet. Armed intruders in section 8A. Defence
stations, defence stations!”
The two mice sniffed irritably round the fragments of their glass
transports where they lay shattered on the floor.
“Damnation,” muttered Frankie mouse, “all that fuss over two pounds
of Earthling brain.” He scuttled round and about, his pink eyes flashing,
his fine white coat bristling with static.
“The only thing we can do now,” said Benji, crouching and stroking
his whiskers in thought, “is to try and fake a question, invent one that
will sound plausible.”
“Difficult,” said Frankie. He thought. “How about What’s yellow and
dangerous?”
Benji considered this for a moment.
“No, no good,” he said. “Doesn’t fit the answer.”
They sank into silence for a few seconds.
“Alright,” said Benji. “What do you get if you multiply six by
seven?”
“No, no, too literal, too factual,” said Frankie, “wouldn’t sustain
the punters’ interest.”
Again they thought.
Then Frankie said: “Here’s a thought. How many roads must a man walk
down?”
“Ah,” said Benji. “Aha, now that does sound promising!” He rolled the
phrase around a little. “Yes,” he said, “that’s excellent! Sounds very
significant without actually tying you down to meaning anything at all.
How many roads must a man walk down? Forty-two. Excellent, excellent,
that’ll fox ‘em. Frankie baby, we are made!”
They performed a scampering dance in their excitement.
Near them on the floor lay several rather ugly men who had been hit
about the head with some heavy design awards.
Half a mile away, four figures pounded up a corridor looking for a
way out. They emerged into a wide open-plan computer bay. They glanced
about wildly.
“Which way do you reckon Zaphod?” said Ford.
“At a wild guess, I’d say down here,” said Zaphod, running off down
to the right between a computer bank and the wall. As the others started
after him he was brought up short by a Kill-O-Zap energy bolt that cracked
through the air inches in front of him and fried a small section of
adjacent wall.
A voice on a loud hailer said, “OK Beeblebrox, hold it right there.
We’ve got you covered.”
“Cops!” hissed Zaphod, and span around in a crouch. “You want to try
a guess at all, Ford?”
“OK, this way,” said Ford, and the four of them ran down a gangway
between two computer banks.
At the end of the gangway appeared a heavily armoured and spacesuited
figure waving a vicious Kill-O-Zap gun.
“We don’t want to shoot you, Beeblebrox!” shouted the figure.
“Suits me fine!” shouted Zaphod back and dived down a wide gap
between two data process units.
The others swerved in behind him.
“There are two of them,” said Trillian. “We’re cornered.”
They squeezed themselves down in an angle between a large computer
data bank and the wall.
They held their breath and waited.
Suddenly the air exploded with energy bolts as both the cops opened
fire on them simultaneously.
“Hey, they’re shooting at us,” said Arthur, crouching in a tight
ball, “I thought they said they didn’t want to do that.”
“Yeah, I thought they said that,” agreed Ford.
Zaphod stuck a head up for a dangerous moment.
“Hey,” he said, “I thought you said you didn’t want to shoot us!” and
ducked again.
They waited.
After a moment a voice replied, “It isn’t easy being a cop!”
“What did he say?” whispered Ford in astonishment.
“He said it isn’t easy being a cop.”
“Well surely that’s his problem isn’t it?”
“I’d have thought so.”
Ford shouted out, “Hey listen! I think we’ve got enough problems on
our own having you shooting at us, so if you could avoid laying your
problems on us as well, I think we’d all find it easier to cope!”
Another pause, and then the loud hailer again.
“Now see here, guy,” said the voice on the loud hailer, “you’re not
dealing with any dumb two-bit trigger-pumping morons with low hairlines,
little piggy eyes and no conversation, we’re a couple of intelligent
caring guys that you’d probably quite like if you met us socially! I don’t
go around gratuitously shooting people and then bragging about it
afterwards in seedy space-rangers bars, like some cops I could mention! I
go around shooting people gratuitously and then I agonize about it
afterwards for hours to my girlfriend!”
“And I write novels!” chimed in the other cop. “Though I haven’t had
any of them published yet, so I better warn you, I’m in a meeeean mood!”
Ford’s eyes popped halfway out of their sockets. “Who are these
guys?” he said.
“Dunno,” said Zaphod, “I think I preferred it when they were
shooting.”
“So are you going to come quietly,” shouted one of the cops again,
“or are you going to let us blast you out?”
“Which would you prefer?” shouted Ford.
A millisecond later the air about them started to fry again, as bolt
after bolt of Kill-O-Zap hurled itself into the computer bank in front of
them.
The fusillade continued for several seconds at unbearable intensity.
When it stopped, there were a few seconds of near quietness ad the
echoes died away.
“You still there?” called one of the cops.
“Yes,” they called back.
“We didn’t enjoy doing that at all,” shouted the other cop.
“We could tell,” shouted Ford.
“Now, listen to this, Beeblebrox, and you better listen good!”
“Why?” shouted Back Zaphod.
“Because,” shouted the cop, “it’s going to be very intelligent, and
quite interesting and humane! Now either you all give yourselves up now
and let us beat you up a bit, though not very much of course because we
are firmly opposed to needless violence, or we blow up this entire planet
and possibly one or two others we noticed on our way out here!”
“But that’s crazy!” cried Trillian. “You wouldn’t do that!”
“Oh yes we would,” shouted the cop, “wouldn’t we?” he asked the other
one.
“Oh yes, we’d have to, no question,” the other one called back.
“But why?” demanded Trillian.
“Because there are some things you have to do even if you are an
enlightened liberal cop who knows all about sensitivity and everything!”
“I just don’t believe these guys,” muttered Ford, shaking his head.
One cop shouted to the other, “Shall we shoot them again for a bit?”
“Yeah, why not?”
They let fly another electric barrage.
The heat and noise was quite fantastic. Slowly, the computer bank was
beginning to disintegrate. The front had almost all melted away, and thick
rivulets of molten metal were winding their way back towards where they
were squatting. They huddled further back and waited for the end.

33

But the end never came, at least not then.
Quite suddenly the barrage stopped, and the sudden silence afterwards
was punctuated by a couple of strangled gurgles and thuds.
The four stared at each other.
“What happened?” said Arthur.
“They stopped,” said Zaphod with a shrug.
“Why?”
“Dunno, do you want to go and ask them?”
“No.”
They waited.
“Hello?” called out Ford.
No answer.
“That’s odd.”
“Perhaps it’s a trap.”
“They haven’t the wit.”
“What were those thuds?”
“Dunno.”
They waited for a few more seconds.
“Right,” said Ford, “I’m going to have a look.”
He glanced round at the others.
“Is no one going to say, No you can’t possibly, let me go instead?”
They all shook their heads.
“Oh well,” he said, and stood up.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then, after a second or so, nothing continued to happen. Ford peered
through the thick smoke that was billowing out of the burning computer.
Cautiously he stepped out into the open.
Still nothing happened.
Twenty yards away he could dimly see through the smoke the
space-suited figure of one of the cops. He was lying in a crumpled heap on
the ground. Twenty yards in the other direction lay the second man. No one
else was anywhere to be seen.
This struck Ford as being extremely odd.
Slowly, nervously, he walked towards the first one. The body lay
reassuringly still as he approached it, and continued to lie reassuringly
still as he reached it and put his foot down on the Kill-O-Zap gun that
still dangled from its limp fingers.
He reached down and picked it up, meeting no resistance.
The cop was quite clearly dead.
A quick examination revealed him to be from Blagulon Kappa – he was a
methane-breathing life form, dependent on his space suit for survival in
the thin oxygen atmosphere of Magrathea.
The tiny life-support system computer on his backpack appeared
unexpectedly to have blown up.
Ford poked around in it in considerable astonishment. These miniature
suit computers usually had the full back-up of the main computer back on
the ship, with which they were directly linked through the sub-etha. Such
a system was fail-safe in all circumstances other than total feedback
malfunction, which was unheard of.
He hurried over to the other prone figure, and discovered that
exactly the same impossible thing had happened to him, presumably
simultaneously.
He called the others over to look. They came, shared his
astonishment, but not his curiosity.
“Let’s get shot out of this hole,” said Zaphod. “If whatever I’m
supposed to be looking for is here, I don’t want it.” He grabbed the
second Kill-O-Zap gun, blasted a perfectly harmless accounting computer
and rushed out into the corridor, followed by the others. He very nearly
blasted hell out of an aircar that stood waiting for them a few yards
away.
The aircar was empty, but Arthur recognized it as belonging to
Slartibartfast.
It had a note from him pinned to part of its sparse instrument panel.
The note had an arrow drawn on it, pointing at one of the controls.
It said, This is probably the best button to press.

34

The aircar rocketed them at speeds in excess of R17 through the steel
tunnels that lead out onto the appalling surface of the planet which was
now in the grip of yet another drear morning twilight. Ghastly grey lights
congealed on the land.
R is a velocity measure, defined as a reasonable speed of travel that
is consistent with health, mental wellbeing and not being more than say
five minutes late. It is therefore clearly an almost infinitely variable
figure according to circumstances, since the first two factors vary not
only with speed taken as an absolute, but also with awareness of the third
factor. Unless handled with tranquility this equation can result in
considerable stress, ulcers and even death.
R17 is not a fixed velocity, but it is clearly far too fast.
The aircar flung itself through the air at R17 and above, deposited
them next to the Heart of Gold which stood starkly on the frozen ground
like a bleached bone, and then precipitately hurled itself back in the
direction whence they had come, presumably on important business of its
own.
Shivering, the four of them stood and looked at the ship.
Beside it stood another one.
It was the Blagulon Kappa policecraft, a bulbous sharklike affair,
slate green in colour and smothered with black stencilled letters of
varying degrees of size and unfriendliness. The letters informed anyone
who cared to read them as to where the ship was from, what section of the
police it was assigned to, and where the power feeds should be connected.
It seemed somehow unnaturally dark and silent, even for a ship whose
two-man crew was at that moment lying asphyxicated in a smoke-filled
chamber several miles beneath the ground. It is one of those curious
things that is impossible to explain or define, but one can sense when a
ship is completely dead.
Ford could sense it and found it most mysterious – a ship and two
policemen seemed to have gone spontaneously dead. In his experience the
Universe simply didn’t work like that.
The other three could sense it too, but they could sense the bitter
cold even more and hurried back into the Heart of Gold suffering from an
acute attack of no curiosity.
Ford stayed, and went to examine the Blagulon ship. As he walked, he
nearly tripped over an inert steel figure lying face down in the cold
dust.
“Marvin!” he exclaimed. “What are you doing?”
“Don’t feel you have to take any notice of me, please,” came a
muffled drone.
“But how are you, metalman?” said Ford.
“Very depressed.”
“What’s up?”
“I don’t know,” said Marvin, “I’ve never been there.”
“Why,” said Ford squatting down beside him and shivering, “are you
lying face down in the dust?”
“It’s a very effective way of being wretched,” said Marvin. “Don’t
pretend you want to talk to me, I know you hate me.”
“No I don’t.”
“Yes you do, everybody does. It’s part of the shape of the Universe.
I only have to talk to somebody and they begin to hate me. Even robots
hate me. If you just ignore me I expect I shall probably go away.”
He jacked himself up to his feet and stood resolutely facing the
opposite direction.
“That ship hated me,” he said dejectedly, indicating the policecraft.
“That ship?” said Ford in sudden excitement. “What happened to it? Do
you know?”
“It hated me because I talked to it.”
“You talked to it?” exclaimed Ford. “What do you mean you talked to
it?”
“Simple. I got very bored and depressed, so I went and plugged myself
in to its external computer feed. I talked to the computer at great length
and explained my view of the Universe to it,” said Marvin.
“And what happened?” pressed Ford.
“It committed suicide,” said Marvin and stalked off back to the Heart
of Gold.

35

That night, as the Heart of Gold was busy putting a few light years
between itself and the Horsehead Nebula, Zaphod lounged under the small
palm tree on the bridge trying to bang his brain into shape with massive
Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters; Ford and Trillian sat in a corner discussing
life and matters arising from it; and Arthur took to his bed to flip
through Ford’s copy of The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Since he was
going to live in the place, he reasoned, he’d better start finding out
something about it.
He came across this entry.
It said: ‘The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to
pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival,
Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why and Where
phases.
“For instance, the first phase is characterized by the question How
can we eat? the second by the question Why do we eat? and the third by the
question Where shall we have lunch?”
He got no further before the ship’s intercom buzzed into life.
“Hey Earthman? You hungry kid?” said Zaphod’s voice.
“Er, well yes, a little peckish I suppose,” said Arthur.
“OK baby, hold tight,” said Zaphod. “We’ll take in a quick bite at
the Restaurant at the End of the Universe.”
Last-modified: Tue, 4-Mar-97 23:24:28 GMT

GUIDE-GOD OF WAR II-PS2

God of War II: FAQ/Walkthrough by VampireHorde
Last Updated 2007-03-19 View/Download Original File

———————————————————————–
———————————————————————–

+++ AREA: PALACE OF RHODES +++

Approach the Blade Of Olympus to trigger the first epic showdown with
the almighty god of Olympus, Zeus.

–BOSS BATTLE: ZEUS
Unfortunately, you are SCREWED! Press the Circle Button when prompted
to trigger the next cutscene.

———————————————————————–
———————————————————————–

+++ AREA: HADES +++

After the cutscene, climb up the wall and attack the protruding arms to
release green energy and restore health. Jump to the right and then
continue climbing to the top towards the light.

SAVE GAME!

You will see a bunch of dead soldiers in the area. One of them is still
alive, though. Approach him and talk to him to trigger a cutscene and
the arrival of the Pegasus. Once the soldier leaves, mount the Pegasus,
IT’S TIME TO RIDE!

———————————————————————–
———————————————————————–

+++ FLIGHT OF THE PEGASUS +++

Attack the flying beasts (griffons) that surround the Pegasus and
continually attack them until the Circle Button appears. Do NOT use
hard attacks on them or they will fly off and shoot energy balls at
you. Just use continuous light attacks (Square Button) to avoid the
hassle. Once prompted, press the button shown onscreen to perform a
cool fatality. There are four beasts that need to be killed, so do it!

After the griffons have been killed, another enemy (a large raven) will
start doing dive bombs at Pegasus. The fastest way to kill this bitch
is to use the Pegasus Dash. When the raven performs the dive bomb,
press the X Button and any of the attack buttons AT THE SAME TIME to
trigger a kill sequence. Press the button shown onscreen and then
rapidly MASH the Circle Button to kill that goddamn raven.

And now for the last part! Dodge the enemies’ purple energy balls until
you enter the next area.

———————————————————————–
———————————————————————–

+++ AREA: LAIR OF THE TITAN +++

–MISSION OBJECTIVE: FREE THE PEGASUS

Once you’ve “landed”, attack the harpies that appear and then descend
the stairs to the bottom. DO NOT ATTACK THE FINGERS JUST YET!!!
Continue towards the bottom of the area and climb down.

++POWER-UP: GORGON’S EYE
Descend the wall to the bottom to find a Gorgon’s Eye and a blood
chest. Open them both and then climb back up. Attack the middle finger
(*snicker*) and roll to the other side.

Now it’s time for some wall-climbing! Head to the other end and descend
down the wall. IGNORE the enemies that appear here! They will only
distract you! Press the R1 Button to quickly descend and the X Button
to ascend faster.

Continue downwards and then towards the right side. Scale the ceiling
and then descend the next wall. Scale the next ceiling and then down to
the bottom floor. Destroy any enemies that followed you!

SAVE GAME!

Head down the path to encounter the Minotaur and some harpies. Use jump
attacks to damage them both and then press the Circle Button when
prompted to finish off the Minotaur. Continue down the path towards a
cage on a zipline. Smash the cage and zip down the zipline to the other
side (open the Blood chest if you want).

Exit the area to a snowy Cliffside.

———————————————————————–
———————————————————————–

+++ AREA: THE SNOWY CLIFFS +++

In this area, you will encounter three archers perched above wooden
scaffoldings and three minotaurs. Attack the scaffoldings to bring down
the archers and then use a Grab attack to kill them off.

Deal with each minotaur the usual way and then ascend up the cliff.
Shimmy to the left and then climb up to the top. Open the chests if you
want and then zip down the zipline. Approach the large bird to trigger
the cutscene.

After the cutscene, attack the chains on the old man (Prometheus) to
bring him down. Now descend the chain down to the bottom. Go around the
fiery blaze and you will be shown another Cliffside (with a Save Point
at the bottom). Descend the walls to the bottom (while avoiding the
enemies) and then destroy the ones that are waiting for you near the
Save Point.

SAVE GAME!!

Go around the path and eliminate more enemies. At the end of the path
is another Gorgon’s Eye, so go and get it! DO NOT CROSS THE BRIDGE! You
don’t have the weapon needed to cross that bridge! Instead, scale the
wall to the top and enter the helmet-covered entrance.

———————————————————————–
———————————————————————–

+++ AREA: TYPHON’S CAVERNOUS PRISON +++

Enter the cavern and open the two chests for goodies. At the end of the
cavern is a grip holder. Press the R1 Button to do a large jump to the
other side. Notice that caged-up chest? Here’s how to get it:

++POWER-UP: PHOENIX FEATHER
To open up the cage, go to the right and you will see another zipline
that takes you back to the area where you started. When you take the
zipline down, keep pressing the R1 Button BEFORE you land on the ground
to do a large jump towards the cage. This will open up the cage and get
you a Phoenix Feather.

Continue down the cavern until you reach a small circular area. BATTLE
TIME! A medusa will appear and you gotta kill that bitch! Use light
attacks and evasion rolls. Simple rolls will keep you from being
frozen. When the Circle Button appears above her head, grab her and
ROTATE the analog stick in the direction it points to AND HOLD IT
THERE! The next direction will tell you to ROTATE the analog stick 360
degrees in a specific direction. Do it and you will behead that whore!

Two more medusas appear together with some harpies. Use the same
strategy with the first medusa and behead both those skanks. Once it’s
clear, smash the pillar blocking the way and descend towards the Save
Point at the bottom.

SAVE GAME!

–OBJECTIVE: OBTAIN TYPHON’S BANE
As you approach Typhon, he begins blowing gusts of wind towards you.
When he stops, approach each ledge and wait until he starts and stops
blowing gusts of wind.

To get rid of the harpies, use jump-and-grab attacks (when behind safe
ledges). As you approach the top ledge, smash the large pillar and
knock it down to make a bridge towards Typhon. Wait for him to stop
blowing gusts and then approach the top pillar across from him and
press the R1 Button to jump towards him and obtain a new weapon!

++NEW WEAPON ACQUIRED: TYPHON’S BANE
Once you’ve acquired the weapon, start using it on Typhon (hold the L2
Button to aim and the Square Button to fire). Fire enough arrows at him
to blind him. Now make your way towards the bridge back to the ledge.

Archers and soldiers will appear in the area, so use the Typhon’s Bane
to rid the archers and then take care of the soldiers. Head to the
right to see more grip holders and three far-off archers. Use the Bane
and fire lots of arrows until the archers are gone.

Now use a jump-and-grip move three times to make it back to where you
started. Destroy the rubble and go back to the Save Point.

SAVE GAME

–MISSION OBJECTIVE: FREE PROMETHEUS

++POWER-UP: GORGON’S EYE
Before going back to the area with the old man, go back down to the
area with the broken bridge. Shoot an arrow at the shining light to
reveal a grip holder. Jump and swing towards the other side to find a
blood chest and a Gorgon’s Eye!

Now head back to the area where the old man is hanging for his life.
Use the Typhon’s Bane a couple of times to bring him down. This will
trigger a cutscene and give Kratos’ a new power.

–NEW POWER OBTAINED: RAGE OF THE TITANS

More soldiers and some minotaurs will appear on the other end. Destroy
them with the Rage powers or use hard combos to eliminate them. Now
climb up the newly opened path up the cliff.

At the top, you will see a wooden scaffolding. To bring it down, shoot
an arrow at it and then climb it up to the top. Go up the next set of
steps to a broken bridge area with a zipline but DO NOT TAKE IT YET!

++SECRET AREA #1: Right next to the broken bridge, there is a large
chain that goes down. Jump towards the chain and slide down to a secret
cavern with two blood chests and a Gorgon’s Eye! YEAH!

++SECRET AREA #2: On the wall of the cliff next to the zipline is a
wall that you can scale. Climb it to the top and then to the left to
find three chests (one with a Phoenix Feather)!

Cross the zipline and eliminate the soldiers that are crossing. At the
other end of the zipline, jump down to the door entrance. Activate Rage
(L3 + R3) and use a combo to break down the door. Now it’s time to free
Pegasus!

Go back to the area where Pegasus is being squished (the Hand Cavern)
and activate Rage. Attack each of the Titan’s fingers to get him to
release Pegasus. WHEW! Now hop on and fly outta the cavern.

———————————————————————–
———————————————————————–

+++ FLIGHT OF THE PEGASUS – PART 2 +++

Just like the first encounter, you will be swarmed by numerous griffons
and harpies. Use continuous Light Attacks on the harpies and the
griffons and perform the fatality on the griffons when prompted.

After you kill three griffons, you will encounter the Dark Raven.
Again, use continuous Light Attacks on it while circling around the
raven to avoid being hit. After much damage, the raven flies off and
starts shooting energy orbs.

Dodge about 5-6 orb attacks and then the kill sequence begins. Press
the buttons that appear onscreen to kill the raven handler and then the
raven itself. As Kratos falls from the sky, press the button that
appears onscreen before he falls! PRESS THE BUTTON!!!!!! AAAHHHH!!!!

———————————————————————–
———————————————————————–

+++ AREA: TEMPLE OF LAHKESIS +++

Jump and grapple your way to the top of the temple. Make a right turn
and you will find the Save Point.

SAVE GAME!

Before you ascend the ladder, go to the other side of the balcony to
find two chests with some goodies and a Phoenix Feather. Now climb up
the ladder to the top. Grapple higher to the upper balcony and jump up.

A new soldier enemy will appear. Eliminate all the soldiers in the area
(or don’t) and then ascend the next ladder to the top. As you approach
the center area, you’ll see numerous hell hounds. Uh-oh! How do you
kill so many hounds? Simple, you grab them! That’s right, approach
every hound and keep pressing the Circle Button and Kratos will grab
and kick each hound (and then he’ll snap their necks after more grabs).

++NOTE: Every time you grab a hound, Kratos takes NO damage for those
few seconds when he is grabbing and kicking the hound. Believe me,
using grab attacks on the hounds is MUCH easier than using combos.

–THE DOUBLE GATE PUZZLE SOLUTION
See that lever? If you activate the lever, you will descend to a lower
level. There is a step-button and a door lever across from you that you
need to pull. Unfortunately, you can’t step on the button AND pull the
lever, so you need some “help”. Go back to the center court.

Attack the hanging corpses to retrieve some extra blood. One of the
hanging corpses is still in human form so cut it down and have Kratos
haul it with him back to the lever. Activate the lever to descend back
to the lower area. Haul the dead body with you and place it on the
step-button. Now pull the lever all the way back and then enter the
metal gate before it shuts itself. Simple.

Enter the next area. Now head for the large bridge and kick it down to
trigger a cutscene. After the cutscene, it’s mini-boss battle time! You
can’t go any further from there, so go back.

———————————————————————–
———————————————————————–

+++ AREA: GARDEN OF LAHKESIS +++

+++MINI-BOSS: CERBERUS + HOUNDS
Go back near the entrance of the bridge and go around the ledge to the
other side. Careful because the ledge collapses! Jump through the open
path and jump down to encounter Cerberus.

The strategy is the same with the previous hounds. Grab and kick each
hound towards Cerberus (be sure to kill the hounds for health!). After
5-6 kicks to Cerberus, perform some combos on it to trigger the kill
sequence. Press the Circle button and then rapidly mash it to
decapitate the first head. Repeat the strategy two more times to kill
the three-headed bitch.

Now make your way to the lower area of the courtyard to see some
statues. Destroy the third statue to bring down a pedestal. Drag and
kick the pedestal under the ledge that Cerberus emerged from and then
jump up to the top to find a Save Point on the left side.

SAVE GAME!

This may seem like a dead end but its not. Squeeze between the pillars
right next to the Save Point. Now scale down the wall to the bottom
area. Go around the ledge to find two chests with goodies.

Ascend the ladder located between the chests and grapple the ceiling.
Make your way down the ceiling while eliminating soldiers. Head all the
way to the other side of the ceiling and then climb up to the top.

———————————————————————–
———————————————————————–

+++ AREA: UPPER GARDEN – PATHWAY TO THE STEEDS +++

Once you climb up, more hounds will appear. There are also some
annoying archers on the other ledge, too. Use the Typhon Bane on the
archers and grab and kick all the hounds until the area is cleared.

Jump towards the adjacent balcony and more soldiers and archers will
appear. Eliminate them all to clear the area and then approach the
lever and activate it to descend.

In the next area, you will encounter the Siren (remember her?). She has
two attacks: a double swipe attack and her shriek attack. If you stay
far, you can avoid SOME of her shrieks. For this battle, use HARD
combos and lots of evasion for the best results. Do 1-2 hard combos and
then roll away. When the Circle Button appears above her head, press it
to kill her (and crack the door). Kill three Sirens to blast the door
open but DO NOT exit just yet!

++POWER-UP: GORGON’S EYE:
See that massive chain on the wall? Climb up the ledge next to it and
then jump onto the chain and run up to the top. Smash through the wall
to find some chest goodies including a Gorgon’s Eye!

Exit the area to find the Save Point.

SAVE GAME!

Exit the area and make your way towards the Steeds Of Time.

———————————————————————–
———————————————————————–

+++ AREA: THE STEEDS OF TIME – ENTRANCE +++

Climb up to the top. Go around the gate entrance to find a lever on the
other side. Activate it to bring down a zipline. Head for the zipline
and zip down the next balcony for first boss fight since the Colossus!

++BOSS BATTLE: THESEUS

WAVE 1: This fight isn’t as hard as it looks. The main strategy here is
to use DEFENSE and lots of quick combos. Attack Theseus and then roll
back. When you are attacking and see that he is about to strike, press
the BLOCK BUTTON to counter. Blocking is the key! Always BLOCK!

Use evasive rolls and well-timed blocks to defend from the boss.
Sometimes the boss will grab you and you are prompted to rotate the
Analog stick. When successful, Kratos will grab the boss and slam him
down. Keep up the defensive tactics and the boss will soon keel over.

WAVE 2: Theseus will perch himself above the doorway and start shooting
thunderbolts and summoning ice spikes. Use evasive rolls to keep from
being hit. To kill the boss, shoot arrows at him with the Typhon Bane.
Keep firing at him non-stop until your Magic is depleted.

At that point, Theseus will summon minotaurs. Destroy the minotaurs to
replenish health and Magic and continue to shoot arrows at Theseus
until he falls over.

WAVE 3: When prompted, press the Circle Button to perform a fatality.
Once Kratos grabs the Key Item, mash the Circle Button for a bloody
finish to Theseus. Eeeeew!!!

++KEY ITEM OBTAINED: THE HORSEKEEPER’S KEY

Enter the room and bust open the two chests for goodies. Read the book
on the mantle if you want and then exit the area on the left or right
side. Make your way to the top of the steed and jump to the upper tower
and zip back to the area where you started the level.

———————————————————————–
———————————————————————–

+++ AREA: HORSEKEEPER’S DOOR +++

Place the Horsekeeper’s Key on the front door and enter inside.
Approach the mantle and press the R1 Button to obtain a new power.

++NEW POWER ACQUIRED: RAGE OF CRONOS
Use your new power on the soldiers that appear. Clear out the area to
open the gates. Exit from the left side and go up the ladder to the top
to find the Save Point.

SAVE GAME!

On the other side of this area is a chest with a Phoenix Feather, so
don’t hesitate to grab it. Now make your way down the pathway to the
reins of the steeds.

———————————————————————–
———————————————————————–

+++ AREA: REINS OF THE STEEDS +++

PUZZLE TIME!

++THE COLORED LEVER PUZZLE SOLUTION:
Here’s how it works, there are four different colored levers. Each one
you pull slowly rotates back into position. When you pull a lever, a
certain energy source will open and you must insert the Horsekeeper’s
Key to keep it open.

Rotate the GREEN lever. Quickly make a left turn and scale the wall to
the top. Approach the pole that is flowing with green energy and place
the HK Key on it (BE QUICK!). Notice the little harpie with the grip
holder?

**NOTE: After activating the green energy pole, jump all the way down
to the bottom to find a chest with a Gorgon’s Eye.

Now head back to the lever area and rotate the RED lever. Quickly turn
right and scale the wall to the top and place the HK Key on the red
energy pole. Notice that other harpie with the grip holder? Go back
down and rotate the BLUE lever. Run back up to the right side and climb
up to the top. Use the grip holder and swing to the other area and
quickly ascend the stairway to the blue energy pole. Place the HK Key
on it. Now jump back to the last lever.

Yup, you guessed it. Do the same thing with the YELLOW lever on the
left side. Once all four levers and poles are open, head back to the
lever area and press the R1 Button to unlock the reins.

Now approach the center and press the R1 Button. Time to wrangle up
them horses, YEEEHAWW!!! Rotate the analog stick in the direction
indicated onscreen to wake up those valiant steeds, HEIGH HO SILVER!!!
After the cutscene, work your way BACK to the Garden of Lahkesis.
Destroy all the soldiers and minotaurs to unlock the gates and then
cross the gigantic chain back to the temple.

———————————————————————–
———————————————————————–

+++ AREA: TEMPLE OF LAHKESIS +++

As you head back to the temple, scale the wall and destroy the rubble
blocking your way. Head up to the top and go around the ledges to find
a Save Point.

SAVE GAME!

Enter the next area.

———————————————————————–
———————————————————————–

+++ AREA: THE DIVINE POOLS +++

Enter the Divine Pools to encounter some new harpie enemies. When you
kill them, they explode so be careful! Once the area is clear, approach
the back wall of the waterfall and destroy the wall to gather lots of
blood and find a blood chest.

Go up the waterfall and make a right turn. You’ll find one more blood
chest. Now head left to a balcony and go around it. See that wall?
Scale it all the way to the left to find a hidden ledge with three
chests (one that has a Gorgon’s Eye!).

Go back to the wall and scale to the bottom ledge. Make a right turn
and continue scaling down and then left. Break open the wall to find a
hidden chest with a Phoenix Feather inside. Now go back up to the upper
ledge and eliminate the exploding harpies and then kick the double
doors open. Enter inside for a new puzzle!

++AMULET OF THE FATES PUZZLE SOLUTION:
Jump down to the bottom area. There is a lever on the upper left of the
area. If you activate it, the gate will only open partially. There is
also a step-button on the lower area of the floor. If you step on it,
the pillars will rise but will then fall when you step off. (There’s
also a hidden chest with a Gorgon’s Eye next to the button!)

See that large centerpiece in the middle of the room? Walk up to the
front of it and drag it BACKWARDS to reveal a hole. Swim into that hole
and break open the wall blocking the way. Emerge on the other end and
approach the statue to obtain the Amulet of the Fates Key Item!

Now swim back to the other side. Stand on the button to raise the
pillars but DO NOT STEP OFF! Activate the Amulet (L1 + R1) to freeze
time and then make your way to the pillars and jump back to the top
area before the timer runs out. Now step on the button across from the
statue and then activate the Amulet. Run towards the statue’s hands and
jump on them to trigger a cutscene.

After the cutscene, smack the statue’s head off and then jump down.
Turn left of the statue to find a Phoenix Feather and a blood chest on
the other end. Exit to the area outside to encounter the shadow wraith
enemy and some harpies.

———————————————————————–
———————————————————————–

+++ AREA: OUTER GARDENS +++

There’s no need to use the Amulet for this battle. Use simple BLOCKING
techniques and lots of hard combos on the shadow wraiths. Grab them
when they’ve been weakened to kill them. Four wraiths appear, so get to
it! Once the area is clear, destroy that noisy goddamn talking statue
head to open the next area.

Cross the bridge to the next series of balconies. There are chests on
the left and right side (one with a Phoenix Feather inside!), so grab
it while their hot! Take the ladder down to the bottom area.

———————————————————————–
———————————————————————–

+++ AREA: DESTINY’S ATRIUM +++

As you approach the center of the atrium, a couple of wild hogs and a
Cyclops will appear. Grab the hogs to kill them. For the Cyclops, use
evasive rolls and hard combos (use the Square, Square, Triangle combo
for more damage). All it takes is some fast evasive reflexes to stay
outta trouble.

When the first Cyclops falls, two more appear. Rid them both using Rage
Powers and whatever magic you wanna use. Once they’ve both fallen, it’s
time to solve the puzzle of the laser eye!

**NOTE: After defeating the Cyclops, a new path with a fireball-spewing
wall will open. Ignore it for now because you don’t have the
appropriate tools to crack it.

++LASER EYE PUZZLE SOLUTION:
At the atrium, you will notice that there are four sets of ladders: two
where you descended and two near the large statue head. Ascend the
ladders near the statue head to the upper balcony.

On either side of the balcony are ledges with hard-to-see statues. Go
to the right side and look for the statue and a lever to activate.
Activate the lever to lower the upper ledge. Grab the statue and drag
it on top of the ledge. Activate the ledge again to raise it up. Now
double jump up to where the statue is located and use a fully charged
kick to fling the statue halfway across the balcony.

Now head for the statue and drag it into place in front of the left eye
to block the flow of energy. For the other eye, look for the statue on
the opposite ledge and just drag it in front of the other eye to
trigger a cutscene! WHEW! Now jump down and approach the SAVE POINT.

SAVE GAME!

Exit the area towards the forest area.

———————————————————————–
———————————————————————–

+++ AREA: BOG OF THE FORGOTTEN +++

Enter the area and head all the way down to trigger a cutscene. Press
the buttons indicated onscreen while being dragged to keep from getting
killed. Once you make it to the end of the path, its boss battle time!

+++BOSS BATTLE: THE BARBARIAN KING

This is a pretty lengthy battle that requires lots of patience and
quick evasion. Think you can handle it, Spartan?

WAVE 1: The BK will circle around the arena and shooting arrows at you.
Block his arrows and pound hard combos towards the horse. That’s pretty
much the strategy for this wave. Once the Circle Button appears, press
it to dismount the BK and slaughter his horse.

WAVE 2: Here’s the long part of the battle. The BK is pretty powerful
and it’ll take LOTS of hard combos to whittle his health down. The BK
has four attacks: ground pound, a double swipe, hellspawn summons, and
the legions of undead souls.

Attack him after he pounds the hammer. Get in as much hard combos and
then evade before he counters. Remember to BLOCK! Keep up this strategy
for this portion of the battle until he starts summoning the hellspawn
soldiers. Eliminate the soldiers for health and magic and continue
pounding combos on the BK. Now would be a REALLY good time to activate
Rage of the Titans.

After much, MUCH damage is inflicted, the Circle Button will finally
appear above the BK’s head. Press it to begin the brutal kill sequence.
Once Kratos grabs the hammer, press the buttons shown onscreen to
finish off this boss! Okay, so it wasn’t as bloody as the Theseus
battle, but whatever!

———————————————————————–
———————————————————————–

+++ AREA: ARENA OF THE FORGOTTEN +++

With the Barbarian Hammer in your possession, put it to use and start
smacking the crap out of the enemies that appear. The Barbarian hammer
is SUPER hard to get used to because of its slow speed but with some
practice, you’ll get used to it (for all of you Ninja Gaiden BLACK
fans, the hammer is similar to using the Unlabored Flawlessness).

Now look above the trees to see a grip holder. Jump and swing out of
the arena to the next area. Head down the green path (kill those hogs
in the way to a new area).

———————————————————————–
———————————————————————–

+++ AREA: TEMPLE OF EURYALE +++

The Save Point is located on the right side of the temple entrance.

SAVE GAME!

Ignore the path on the left side of the temple because you don’t have a
specific Key Item yet. Instead, continue past the Save Point to the
other end. Head down the path to trigger a short cutscene. Approach the
dead soldier to obtain a Key Item.

–KEY ITEM OBTAINED: EURYALE’S KEY
Once you grab the key, some hogs clad in armor (huh, what?) will
appear. Eliminate them (or don’t) and head back to the temple entrance.
A couple of skeleton warriors will rise at the temple entrance.

These enemies are quite strong and require a little more power to
defeat. Equip the Barbarian Hammer and pound the crap out of them. Now
head for the door on the left side of the temple entrance and use the
key. Enter inside to see a chest with some green goodies.

Just across from the green chest is a well-hidden chest with a Gorgon’s
Eye in it, so grab it! Enter the next area to encounter a new enemy.

———————————————————————–
———————————————————————–

+++ AREA: RUINS OF THE FORGOTTEN +++

A mega-Cyclops will appear and try to stomp on you. Just like with the
previous battles with the Cyclops, use hard combos and quick evasion.
The Cyclops has a pretty strong club so avoid getting whacked by it.

After much damage, press the Circle button when prompted to trigger the
kill sequence. Press the buttons that appear onscreen to remove the
Cyclops’ eye. Once the first one is killed, more soldiers and one more
Cyclops will appear. Take care of them using Rage powers and then grab
the eye from the Cyclops.

**NOTE: Collect 20 Cyclops Eyes to unlock a special item!

Head for the doorway on the teeter-totter and push out the coffin-
looking thing out of the way. Open the gate and head inside. As you
circle around the hallways, go all the way to the end (eliminate the
enemies) to find two chests with goodies. Head back to the middle of
the hall and enter the cave area.

Jump down to encounter harpies and shadow wraiths. Destroy them with
ease using the hammer and Typhon’s Bane. Once the area is clear,
destroy the large rock pillar in the center of the room to reveal a
grip holder above.

Now jump and swing your way past two areas to the next area. In the
next area, you will see a ladder on the right side. Climb it up and
then take the zipline to the other end (eliminate the enemies) to find
two chests (one with a Gorgon’s Eye!). Jump down and continue past the
red waters to an area with some deadly archers.

The archers here tend to use explosive arrows and throw bombs at you.
Use the Bane to drop two of them down but watch out! They will crawl
towards you and self-destruct! Approach the pillar and press the R1
Button and the mash the L1 and R1 Buttons to destroy the pillar. With
the area clear, continue onwards to the next area.

+++THE TRI-GATE PUZZLE SOLUTION:
There is a step-button in the center of the room, a partially-opened
gate with a step-button on the left side, and a closed gate on the
right. Look for the lever on the upper right side of the room and
activate it to lower the gate on the right side. There is a dead body
lying on the ground but don’t grab it yet!

Break open the wall next to the body to reveal a small waterway
(eliminate the soldier). Go to the left gate (jump over the spikes) and
break open the wall behind the gate to reveal another waterway. Now go
back and grab the body on the right side and toss it into nearby the
waterway. Head BACK to the waterway on the opposite side and wait for
the body to appear. Quickly grab the body and place it on the step
button to partially open the main gate.

Now go to the center of the room and step on the button to open the
main gate. Quickly had for the Save Point before the gate closes!

SAVE GAME!

Continue down the path to a new area.

———————————————————————–
———————————————————————–

+++ AREA: RIVER OF THE FORGOTTEN +++

After the cutscene, jump down to the giant floating waterwheel and
start rotating the lever. As you turn the lever in a circular motion,
enemies will jump at you to distract you.

Your best bet to rotating the wheel without it going back too far is to
use the Rage of Cronos magic attack. This will temporarily stop the
enemies in their tracks and allow you to continue rotating the lever.
Make it past both waterwheels and then head for the next area.

+++MINI-BOSS BATTLE: PETRIFIED MINOTAUR
This boss is sort of like the second boss from the first God Of War
game. Only this one is easier to defeat! The enemy has two attacks: a
ground pound and a circular attack. Use quick evasion and hard combos
on it to whittle its health down. When the Circle Button appears, press
it to trigger the kill sequence. Press the buttons onscreen to defeat
it. Piece o’ cake!

Run up to the tree bark and bring it down. Go up the wooden bark and
scale the wall and then jump down. Take the zipline to the other end
while destroying the soldiers that appear. Jump down at the next ledge
and head for the door next to the spinning waterwheel. Open the door to
reveal an Amulet statue.

Activate the Amulet to slow down the waterwheel. Run past the frozen
waterwheel to the opposite side and jump down to a conveyor belt.
Destroy the soldiers and time your movements as you descend the
conveyor belt that has medusa gazes. Destroy the wooden wall at the end
of the belt and then jump and swing to the other end of the area.

Destroy the statue in the middle to reveal a coffin-like item blocking
the way. Push the coffin FORWARD and out. Jump down to end up back in
the area where you started the level. Push and kick the coffin next to
the doorway entrance with the other coffin to reveal a gap. Approach
the gap and have Kratos toss the large building into the water below to
reveal a new path.

———————————————————————–
———————————————————————–

+++ AREA: THE PETRIFIED PATH +++

Jump down to the newly opened path to the other side. Scale the wall
and destroy the tree blocking the way. Make your way to the other side
and jump down. Go down the pathway (ignore the doorway with the
rotating wheel) and make a left to see some petrified minotaurs. See
that soldier on the ground? Approach him and talk to him.

After the cutscene, a medusa will appear. Kill her the old-fashioned
way and then grab the soldier’s body. Haul it with you to the other end
of the path with the conveyor belt and then drop it down.

++NOTE: At the end of this pathway are two chests (one with a Phoenix
Feather!).

When the rotating wheel collapses, smash it down and enter the next
area. Raise the gate to encounter another Cerberus-type enemy. I don’t
really consider this a boss battle so I won’t label it as one. The
hound likes to use fireball attacks. Just use lots of evasion and hard
combos to whittle its health. Remember to block its attacks! This enemy
has a lot of HP so be patient and keep damaging it until the Circle
Button appears. Press it to end the battle and obtain a new Key Item.

+++KEY ITEM OBTAINED: GOLDEN FLEECE

Now pull the nearby lever to activate a fireball-spewing wall. Stand in
the area where the fireball is landing and block the fireball at the
right time to deflect it back at the wall. Exit the arena and eliminate
the medusa’s that appear but DON’T EXIT THE AREA YET!

++POWER-UP: GORGON’S EYE
Just before you exit the area, destroy the rotating wheel to reveal a
secret chest with a Gorgon’s Eye!

There is nothing left to do in this area, so go back to the entrance at
the Temple of Euryale.

SAVE GAME!

———————————————————————–
———————————————————————–

+++ AREA: TEMPLE OF EURYALE +++

Head to the front door and use the Golden Fleece to deflect the
medusa’s gaze and destroy the door. Enter inside and open the next
door. Destroy the petrified soldiers and the un-petrified ones that
appear and then take the ladder going down.

In this large hall, two minotaurs and numerous soldiers will appear.
Try to kill the minotaur first by using Rage and then deal with the
soldiers last. When the area is cleared, exit to the next area to
trigger a cutscene.

Approach the lever and start rotating it to descend to the lower level.
When you reach the bottom, rid the harpies.

++POWER-UP: GORGON’S EYE & PHOENIX FEATHER
See that logo in the middle of the wall? Destroy it to reveal a hidden
chest with a Phoenix Feather. Also, there is a hidden chest with a
Gorgon’s Eye underneath the elevator you just used. Lift the elevator
halfway so that you can still exit through to the lower floor and you
will see the open door underneath.

On the second elevator (with the missing handle), use the ledges on the
wall to climb up to the top. Once you exit the area, you will encounter
a mega-soldier. Use blocks with the Fleece and counter him using the
Barbarian hammer for some insane poundage! Finish him off with a
fatality and then approach the Save Point.

SAVE GAME!

———————————————————————–
———————————————————————–

+++ AREA: LOWLANDS VISTA +++

Go back to the area where the cowardly soldier ran off to and climb up
to the top. The next part involves Kratos scaling the ceiling with a
lot of killer sawblades rotating all over the place. Climb up the wall
and start scaling past each sawblade SLOWLY! Time your moves so that
you can reach the other end.

Jump down and rotate the lever to pull back a large spiked battering
ram on the right side. Quickly make your way inside and go to the other
end to find a lever. Activate it and quickly head for the door on the
other end and open it before the battering ram squishes you. Now jump
down the bottom area and destroy the petrified soldier reading the book
on the pedestal. Read the book to trigger the next boss battle!

+++BOSS BATTLE: EURYALE
Euryale is basically a big fat version of Medusa. A lot of her attacks
revolve around her tail and her stone gaze.

WAVE 1: Euryale is pretty quick and quite powerful. Use double jumps to
evade her tails swipes and quick evasion from her shrieks and gaze.
Your best bet at damaging her is to use air attacks. Keep attacking her
from above to whittle her health down and remember to BLOCK! If you
have Rage in the Rage meter, don’t hesitate to use it! When she starts
using the stone gaze, deflect it using the Fleece! At certain times,
rapidly tap the Circle button to repel the gaze back at her.

WAVE 2: Euryale will slide up one of the pillars and begin firing
fireballs at you. This is the best time to start using air attacks on
her. You can deflect the fireballs with the Fleece if you are quick
enough with the timing. When she uses her scream, be ready to deflect!
Approach her and use air attacks at her until she keels over. From
there, the Circle Button will appear, so press it and rotate the Analog
stick in the direction indicated onscreen to drag her down.

She will then slither up to the next pillar. Repeat the tactic again to
finally bring her down to the ground.

WAVE 3: Now that she’s weakened, use hard air combos on her. Activate
Rage and start pounding the hurt until the kill sequence is triggered.
Press the buttons onscreen to kill her and obtain a new item.

+++NEW WEAPON ACQUIRED: HEAD OF EURYALE
Use the weapon on the enemies that appear. Kill them all using
Euryale’s head to open the next area with the Save Point.

SAVE GAME!

———————————————————————–
———————————————————————–

+++ AREA: WATERWAYS +++

+++TURNSTILES AND WATERWAYS PUZZLE SOLUTION:
This may look like a complicated puzzle, but it ain’t! It just happens
to be VERY long! Turn the first turnstile (white color) all the way
around until the large pillar stops. Jump to the lever across from the
turnstile and activate it.

Quickly activate the Amulet and swim down to the newly opened gate
under the water to the other side. Once the gate closes, stay under
water and activate the lever next to where the gate shut just in case.
Now swim up to the top and turn the turnstile (yellow color) until the
large pillar stops. Swim down and activate the other lever in the
water. As the double gates open, swim inside and use a lightly charged
dash to make it to the other end of the gate before it shuts.

Swim up to the top and turn the turnstile (red color) until the large
pillar stops.

**NOTE: Behind this turnstile is a large cracked wall with a hidden
chest that has a Gorgon’s Eye!

Swim back down and find the wooden door in the water on the right. Use
a charged dash move to destroy the door. Swim up and turn the turnstile
(green color) until the large pillar stops. Now approach the last lever
across the turnstile and activate it to open a doorway above. Enter the
nearby doorway and turn right to an open arena. Approach the lever and
turn it to trigger an enemy battle.

Destroy the enemies using hard combos until the area is cleared. Now
here comes the hard part. Turn the turnstile until the large pillar
stops. Once you let go, the pillar will slowly start going back down
after a few seconds. Activate the Amulet and quickly exit to the ladder
and head up to the top and step on the button. By this time, the Amulet
runs out, so activate it again and then start jumping and swinging from
pillar to pillar. The third pillar is the one that is slowly going down
so BE QUICK when swinging around each pillar! Swing past all five
pillars to complete this puzzle! WOOHOO!

———————————————————————–
———————————————————————–

+++ AREA: THE CRUSHING FLOOR +++

Make your way inside the doorway into a small room with a lever.
Activate the lever to make the floor start rising. As the floor rises,
hounds will start jumping down from above. You can’t spend your time
fighting all of them so use the Cronos Rage attack.

When the floor reaches the ceiling, have Kratos push the floor back
down. The exit to this area is locked and the only way to open it is to
“push” the floor back down at least 5-6 times before you can exit. Once
you exit the room, go around the hall to encounter some harpies and
some wooden bars to cross.

Use the Typhon Bane on the harpies and then slowly cross the bars. On
the last bar, jump onto the wall above and then shimmy all the way to
the other end and jump down. Exit the area and you’ll encounter another
large petrified minotaur mini-boss. The tactic is still the same so get
to it! Once the minotaur is gone, jump and swing to the Save Point!

SAVE GAME!

———————————————————————–
———————————————————————–

+++ AREA: CATACOMBS OF THE FALLEN +++

Go through the catacombs and destroy the skeleton soldiers blocking the
way. Approach the spiral staircase and go all the way to the top.
Activate the lever to bring down more stairs. Exit the area back to…

———————————————————————–
———————————————————————–

+++ AREA: DESTINY’S ATRIUM +++

++OPTIONAL CHESTS: When you exit the stairway, go BACK into the Bog Of
The Forgotten. Just before you encountered the Barbarian King, there
were two chests at the end of the bog. Go back and open them for some
major goodies!

Remember that fireball-spewing wall from earlier in the game? Now you
can get through it. Stand in the path of the fireball and use the
Fleece to shatter the wall open. Shimmy on the right side of the cavern
and then make your way down and outside. Eliminate the archers and the
mega-soldier. Use the Bane for the archers!

Jump and swing to the next ledge but DO NOT swing to the next grip
holder yet! Land onto the next ledge, and then scale the wall to the
top to find two chests (one with a Gorgon’s Eye!). Now continue
swinging and jumping to the other side. Eliminate the soldiers and then
climb up the ladder to the next area.

———————————————————————–
———————————————————————–

+++ AREA: COURTYARD OF ATROPOS +++

Kill all the shadow wraiths in this area. Once the area is cleared,
head for the Save Point.

SAVE GAME!

You can’t solve the puzzle in this area for now, so make your way to
the doorway across the Save Point. Open the door to a large hall.

———————————————————————–
———————————————————————–

+++ AREA: HALLWAY OF ATROPOS +++

Make a right turn to the adjacent hall to encounter some enemies. These
enemies (priests) summon minotaurs to fight for them, so be smart and
kill them first! Block their green ball attacks and simply pound the
combos onto those priests until they’ve all fallen. Oh, and don’t
forget to kill those minotaurs!

+++THE DOUBLE STATUE PUZZLE SOLUTION:
In the room are two statues and a turnstile that raises a large
platform. When you rotate the turnstile, the platform rises but will
quickly go down once you release the lever. Here’s how to solve this
really tedious puzzle…

Grab one statue and place it on top of the pedestal. Grab the other
statue and place it on the RIGHT side of the pedestal but not on it.
Now rotate the turnstile all the way to the top. As soon as you release
the lever, quickly grab the statue that was next to the pedestal and
kick it UNDER the platform to stop it halfway. Now climb on top of the
statue and jump to the top.

Open the chests and then ascend the ladder to the area above. There is
a far off chest but if you try to approach it, enemies will appear. If
you want it, get it. But if not, take the stairway on the right side
and go down to the hall below. Inside you will encounter a new enemy
(satyrs) with some strong skills. For this battle, use the Fleece
counterattack on them to get the upper hand.

Defeat both the satyrs to open up the doorway. Approach the large block
and pull it BACKWARDS. Jump on top of it to find a hidden chest with a
Gorgon’s Eye. Jump back down and then kick the block FORWARD. Jump down
back to…

———————————————————————–
———————————————————————–

+++ AREA: COURTYARD OF ATROPOS +++

Drag the large block to the nearby pillar that has a broken ladder.
Place the block underneath and then jump up to the ladder. Climb up to
the balcony above. Rid the harpies above first!

Explore the upper balcony to find some chests and a chest with a
Phoenix Feather. There is also a statue that is missing a shield
Hmmm…I wonder why. Make your way to the door located on the left side
of the large statue’s head and enter. In the middle of the room will be
a couple of soldiers and a berserker enemy.

Eliminate the soldiers the usual way but use the hammer against the
large berserker guy. Block and counter his attacks and then pound him
into dirt. When the Circle Button appears above its head, press it to
perform a really bloody fatality. Eliminate the second berserker to
clear the area. Exit the room to find a Save Point.

SAVE GAME!

———————————————————————–
———————————————————————–

+++ AREA: EDGE OF CREATION +++

Go around the ledge and then swing and jump your way to the other side
of the area. Eliminate the soldiers that appear here.

+++THE MOVING VINES PUZZLE SOLUTION
This puzzle is not so difficult to figure out. First, step on the large
circular stone to make the large vines come out of their holes.
Activate the Amulet and cross the vines to the center platform. Quickly
make a left turn to the vines on the left side before the timer runs
out. Destroy the enemies on the platform to clear it.

Step on the stone to make the vines come out. This time, head to the
center platform and then turn left to the next ledge. Destroy the
enemies that appear and then step on the stone to reveal the last set
of vines. Activate the Amulet and then head for the center platform and
then turn left to the main doorway.

**NOTE: There is a hidden chest on the center platform (with the two
trees). Jump down between the trees and you will land a tiny ledge with
a chest that contains a Gorgon’s Eye. If you take this item, you will
have to do the puzzle all over again by stepping on the stone and going
back to the starting point.

Now enter and open the door to fight someone you may have heard of
before from a certain movie…

+++BOSS BATTLE: PERSEUS
That’s right! The main character from the movie “Clash Of The Titans”!
This battle is quite a trip and requires some patience and quick
evasion on your part to defeat Perseus.

WAVE 1: Although Perseus is invisible you can still see his footsteps
as he runs on the water and you can also see his shadow if you stay
under the shade. Block all his attacks and then use hard combo counters
to whittle his health down. Continue the tactic until the Circle Button
appears above his head. Press it to grab Perseus and destroy his
helmet. (It may take a few tries to grab him but keep going!)

WAVE 2: Armed with sword and shield, stick with the same plan and
inflict hard combos on Perseus while staying defensive. When he starts
his slingshot attack, block it and then roll forward and attack.
Continue to pound the combos while blocking his attacks. When he uses
his sunlight attack, quickly wiggle the analog stick to recover and
then attack him before he can strike. When the Circle Button appears,
press it to grab Perseus and destroy his sword.

WAVE 3: This last part of the battle can take a very long time because
you need to do one thing to end it: push Perseus to the wall at the
back of the arena. Perseus will continually run from end to end of the
arena while attacking you. Keep hitting him with combos and then try to
get him near the wall to tire him out. When the Circle Button appears,
press it and follow the instructions on the screen to finish him off.

+++KEY ITEM OBTAINED: PERSEUS SHIELD

Open the chests near the chain for some goodies and then slide back
down to…

———————————————————————–
———————————————————————–

+++ AREA: COURTYARD OF ATROPOS +++

+++COURTYARD OF ATROPOS PUZZLE SOLUTION
Now it’s time to solve this mystery! With the Perseus Shield in your
hand, go to the upper balcony and place it on the statue on the lower
right area (destroy its perch first).

Grab the statue and drag it out. Kick it to the lower courtyard and
then jump down. Drag the statue to the square perch on the wooden
bridge and place it. Now rotate the turnstile in the middle of the
courtyard to raise the bridge to block one of the laser eyes. Now what
do you do? After a few seconds, the bridge lowers back down. AAAAHHH!!!
NOW WHAT??!!!!??? Simple! As soon as you raise the bridge, climb back
to the top balcony using the nearby ladder and use the Fleece on the
other eye! HAH, GOTCHA!

Head back to the Save Point and save your game.

SAVE GAME

Now head on up the stairs to a new area.

———————————————————————–
———————————————————————–

+++ AREA: LOWLANDS ENTRANCE +++

As you go up the path, you will see a path on the right with two
archers and a grip holder and the other path is a trap floor that locks
a door to the chests across from you when you step on it.

Ignore the chests and kill the archers with the Bane. Jump and swing to
the other side (or swim on the water). Go around the corner and jump
into the water and emerge on the other side. Keep going around the
corner and exit. You will see a Save Point across the broken bridge but
don’t go to it yet! Look for the wall on the right side and scale it to
the top. Approach the lever and activate it to open the gate below.

Jump down and enter the small area to find the Dark Raven that was
killed earlier in the game. Grab the weapon sticking out of its body to
acquire a brand new weapon!

+++NEW WEAPON ACQUIRED: SPEAR OF DESTINY
Use the spear on the enemies at appear to clear out the area. Now it’s
puzzle time!

+++URN OF OLYMPUS PUZZLE SOLUTION:
Remember that chest you saw that had the trap floor and spiked doorway
at the other side of this area? Here’s how to get it: grab the statue
with the green emerald on it (the one to use for the Amulet) and drag
it onto the turnstile. Turn the turnstile clockwise until the statue is
facing south. Now drag the statue to the lower area. Activate the
Amulet and head back to the area with the trap floor before the timer
runs out. If successful, you will enter the room and find three chests
with a Gorgon’s Eye, Phoenix Feather, and the Urn Of Olympus!

Head back to the area where you saw the Save Point (near the broken
bridge). Bring the statue BACK to where to you found it and place it on
the turnstile. Rotate the turnstile until the statue is facing EAST and
then place it back where you got it. Now go to the teeter-totter bridge
and jump on it to level the bridge. Activate the Amulet and then cross
the bridge to the Save Point.

SAVE GAME!

———————————————————————–
———————————————————————–

+++ AREA: CROSSING THE LOWLANDS +++

Now comes the fun part! If you’ve seen the commercials for this game,
then you’ll know what I’m talking about. It’s the pillar jumping mini-
game! Yeah! Here’s how it goes:

Swing and jump past the first two grip holders and then grip the
pillar. Kratos will then jump to the adjacent pillar and start swinging
in a circle. Land on the platform across the pillar and let it fall. As
it reaches near the bottom, double jump to the grip holder and hold on.

The pillars across from you will begin to fall. Wait for the nearby
pillar to drop down and then swing and jump past it to the second
falling pillar. Wait as the pillar drops lower to jump towards the
lower grip holder. Jump and swing towards it and Kratos will begin
hopping from pillar to pillar.

On the fourth jump, wait for the pillar that you are on to slowly fall
down near the last grip holder. Double jump to it to swing to safety!
WHEW! That was crazy awesome! Now enter inside the cave.

This next part involves two difficult battles inside the cave. Go up
the path and you will encounter sirens and some large minotaur enemies.
Use the Fleece to defend from all the enemies and try out the Spear of
Destiny if you wanna spice up the battle. Be sure to perform fatalities
on them to restore health and Magic! Once the area is cleared, enter
the next area for ANOTHER battle!

The next area has some large satyr and berserker enemies. Stay
defensive and use the hard combos with the hammer or spear. Perform
fatalities on the enemies to clear the area. Now exit this cave and
head outside to find the Save Point.

SAVE GAME!

———————————————————————–
———————————————————————–

+++ AREA: THE GREAT CHASM +++

Go down the bridge to encounter a scrawny fellow by the name of Icarus.

+++BOSS (?) BATTLE: ICARUS
I don’t know if this encounter with Icarus qualifies as a boss battle
but I’ll let it slip. Simply follow the directions shown onscreen as
you fall down the chasm. When Kratos is above Icarus, start punching
him (press the Square Button continuously). Continue pressing the
analog stick in the direction indicated until you are prompted to
rapidly tap the Circle Button. Once that’s done, Kratos will receive a
new power.

+++NEW POWER ACQUIRED: ICARUS WINGS

———————————————————————–
———————————————————————–

+++ AREA: THE FACE OF ATLAS +++

After landing on the ground, make your way around Atlas (go left) and
all the way to the back to find the Save Point and some chests.

SAVE GAME!

Now it’s time to put those wings to use! Go to the wall where you
landed (near Atlas’ nose) and scale to the top and then jump down to
the ledge below. Go around the corner to see large gaps. If you try to
jump, you will land on the ground below.

When you jump a gap, press the X Button and then press and hold it a
second time to glide to the next ledge. Jump and glide to the next
ledge and climb up. See those hanging platforms with the chains? Glide
from platform to platform (eliminate the harpies) until you see a
platform in the red river below.

Glide to the bottom platform and then glide into an icky cave entrance.
Satyrs and harpies will appear, so eliminate them with the spear! Once
the area is cleared, go to the end of the path to a doorway that is
being protected by tentacles. Attack the tentacles to repel them and
then grab the large “bone” and push it BACKWARDS.

Drag the bone to the left of the door and then jump to the hidden ledge
on the top left side to find a chest with a Phoenix Feather and more
goodies. Now jump down and drag the bone from the back into the
doorway. Make sure to drag it from the other side! Jump on top of the
bone to the upper ledge and then head down to the next area.

+++MINI-BOSS BATTLE: PETRIFIED MINOTAUR
The petrified minotaur is back and stronger than before. Use the same
tactics from your previous battles with him and stay evasive! Defense
will not work for this battle, only evasion!

After much damage is dealt, the large platform will sink. Jump and
glide to the wall and scale it. The boss will start tossing rocks at
you, so either jump out of the way or hit them. Once the platform rises
again, continue the hard combo assault until it finally dies.

Once the minotaur dies, it leaves a tiny rock behind. Drag the rock to
the nearby doorway and then jump on top of it. Jump and glide to the
doorway above and climb up. Glide to the bottom and you will see two
chests. One of them has a Phoenix Feather, so go get it! Exit the room
and find the Save Point on the left side.

SAVE GAME!

———————————————————————–
———————————————————————–

+++ AREA: INSIDE THE MIGHTY TITAN +++

After you save your game, look next to the Save Point. Do you see those
tentacles? Attack them to release a floating boulder. Now catch up to
the boulder and jump on top of it. Destroy the obstructions in the way
and let it float to the edge of the river. There is a grip holder at
the edge, so jump and swing to it. Swing and glide to the next area.

Destroy that obstruction in the way. There is a high ledge that you
cannot glide to, so what now? When you destroyed the obstruction,
notice there is hot steam coming out of it. Stand on top of the steam
and double jump and unflap your wings to soar higher! Glide to the top
ledge and enter! Easy.

AS you enter the next area, you’ll notice that there are numerous
harpie hives in the cavern. Go up to each one and destroy them to rid
all the harpies in this area. There are six hives to destroy so get to
it! Once all the hives are gone, kill the remaining harpies to clear
the area of enemies.

One of the destroyed hives revealed a wall to scale. Jump up to the
wall and scale to the other end and jump down. Open the two chests if
you want and then jump and glide to the adjacent wall. Scale it to the
other side and destroy the stalactite blocking the way. Jump down and
out towards the open exit. DO NOT TRY TO JUMP OUT! Look to the left of
the wall to see that it is scaleable.

Scale the wall to the left and go around the ceiling while destroying
stalactites and enemies in the way. When you reach the end, climb up
and out at the top. Take the platform going down and then jump to the
adjacent wall. Descend the wall and approach the remaining stalactites.
Now that a new path has been revealed, approach the Save Point and save
your game!

SAVE GAME!

Now jump and glide to the new pathway (be sure to grab some extra steam
and glide higher) to exit the area. Jump and glide to the next platform
with the turnstile. When you land, a couple of harpies and satyrs will
emerge. Kill them all with Rage of the Titans and the spear. When the
platform is clear, rotate the turnstile all the way until the platform
stops moving. Now jump and glide through the next three platforms and
then take the zipline to the Save Point.

SAVE GAME!

———————————————————————–
———————————————————————–

+++ AREA: ASCENSION OF ATLAS +++

Ascend the nearby wall and jump to the next wall. Kill the enemies that
approach you and then continue upwards. Destroy the rubble blocking the
way and go all the way to the top. At the top, you will see a grip
holder. Jump towards it and swing and jump your way past two more grip
holders until you reach a wall.

Ascend that wall and jump to the next ledge. Go around the ledge to see
two large stone blocks and what seems like a really high ledge.

+++DOUBLE STONE PUZZLE SOLUTION:
This one was quite easy to figure out. Grab one stone block and drag it
up the short slope. On top of the slope, drop it down to the ground
below. Now grab the other stone block and drag it up the slope. Drop
the stone block on TOP of the other block.

Now drag the two-tiered stone block and drag it to the high ledge. Jump
to the top ledge and grab the top stone and drag it towards the wall.
Now you can reach the higher ledge. Notice that when you reach the
higher ledge, there is a wall that you can scale across the ledge. Jump
to the ledge and scale the wall to the left to find a hidden chest with
a Gorgon’s Eye.

Go around the ledge and scale the wall going up. There are falling
rocks that fall in a left and right pattern. When a rock falls on the
left side, jump to the right. And when a rock falls from the right
side, jump to the left. Understand the pattern? Make your way up and
around two walls to the other end and then ascend to the top. Destroy
the large chain to trigger a series of cutscenes.

When prompted, rapidly tap the L1 + R1 buttons to avoid getting
squished by Atlas. After another cutscene, Kratos receives a new power!

+++NEW POWER ACQUIRED: ATLAS QUAKE
Test out your new power against the enemies that appear. Destroy all
the enemies to trigger the next cutscene. Once the cutscene ends, jump
and glide to the Save Point.

SAVE GAME!

**USELESS NOTE: In case you’re wondering why the voice of Atlas sounds
familiar, that’s because he’s voiced by Michael Clarke Duncan.

———————————————————————–
———————————————————————–

+++ AREA: THE PALACE OF THE FATES +++

Jump and glide past the platforms. Climb up the platform and then jump
and glide to the adjacent ledge. From that ledge, jump and glide to the
highest platform. Open the chest for some health and then glide on down
to the Palace gates.

Notice that the gate is barred and cannot be opened. Under the walkway
on the right side is a hard-to-see lever. Activate it and prepare for a
really intense battle. Four large Cyclops, armored hogs, and bomb-
throwing archers will join in on the battle royale.

Use Rage of the Titans as much as possible and pound on the enemies
using the hammer and various combos with the other weapons. If
possible, try to use a fatality on the Cyclops so that you can grab
their eye. Once the arena is cleared, it’s time to open the doorway.

Next to where you activated the lever is a large piece of wood jutting
out next to the chest. Grab the piece of wood and rotate the doorway.
Keep rotating the doorway until the open gate appears. Now enter inside
to a massive spike trap. Activate the lever in the middle of the room
to start the revolving doorway puzzle.

+++REVOLVING DOORWAY PUZZLE SOLUTION:
This puzzle is quite painful and very annoying but what the hell can I
do about it? Watch the spikes on the floor. When you see them
protruding through the holes, it means you must move out of the way in
a few seconds or else you will get spliced. The open doorway revolves
around the room. It stops at every door for a few seconds and then
moves clockwise to the next doorway.

The doorway on the upper right side has a large stone. Wait for the
open doorway to reach this door. Once the doorway is open, grab the
stone and drag it out to solve the puzzle. A new path opens up but do
not exit just yet!

Enter each room that has a chest and grab the goodies. Look for the
room on the left with a dead body. Grab the crank key item on the body
and then exit through the newly opened path. Make a left turn at the
green chest to see a large courtyard.

———————————————————————–
———————————————————————–

+++ AREA: THE PALACE COURTYARD +++

You cannot open the doors in this area or use the horn yet. Instead,
take the ladder on the other side and climb it up to find a turnstile
with no lever. Attach the lever you found from the dead body and then
rotate it all the way until it stops. As you rotate the lever, the
flames on the left side of the TV screen will die down.

When the turnstile stops, activate the Amulet and then jump and glide
over to the ledge past the flames. Next to the flames is a tiny little
crevice that has a hidden chest with a Phoenix Feather. Grab it and
then jump over to the next balcony. Enter to find the Save Point.

SAVE GAME!

Head to the other side of the save point and jump to the next area.

———————————————————————–
———————————————————————–

+++ AREA: THE EAST AUDITORIUM +++

In the next area is a lever at the end of the hall. Also notice that
there is a steam vent on the ground. Activate the lever to open the top
portion of the metal gate. Quickly run over to the steam vent and
unflap your wings so that you soar higher and can fly over the gate
before it closes. It may take a couple of tries but you can do it!

Go down the hall and destroy the satyrs and hounds that appear. Use the
Atlas Quake for faster results. When it’s cleared, open the large door
and enter the next area.

———————————————————————–
———————————————————————–

+++ AREA: AUDITORIUM OF LAHKESIS +++

Do you see that large wooden construction thingie in the room? Destroy
it and a large stone will fall to the floor. Grab the stone and drag it
outside all the way across to the other side of the auditorium.

Also, do you notice the pedestal outside with the book? Kratos cannot
read it and must use a translator. On the other end of the auditorium
is a man praying on his knees (that’s your translator). If you lift him
up, the button he was kneeling on closes the gate behind you. That’s
why you brought the stone with you. Pick up the man and drop him down
somewhere. Drag the stone in his place and then bring the man to the
book, but wait!

–MISSION OBJECTIVE: PROTECT THE TRANSLATOR
Satyrs and hounds will swarm at you. You must kill them all while
trying to lift the man to the pedestal on the other side. Use the Atlas
Quake to stun the enemies and then quickly pick up the man and carry
him to the pedestal. If you’re sly and quick, you can carry him past
the enemies while they try to surround you!

Once you reach the pedestal, more enemies appear. Now you must
definitely kill them all! Rid all the hounds and satyrs while trying to
protect the man. When the area is clear, approach the pedestal and
press the R1 button to make the man read the book. When prompted,
rapidly tap the Circle Button on various parts of the scene.

After the cutscene with Lahkesis, approach the Ram doorway and grab the
item on the door.

+++KEY ITEM OBTAINED: THE RAM KEY
With the item in hand, open the doorway and go thru the hallway. Open
the other door and go back to the Save Point.

SAVE GAME

Go back to the courtyard and use the Ram Key on one of the doors. Enter
inside and go through the hall to trigger an enemy battle. There are
two spiked walls that are closing in slowly from both sides. To get
them to stop, you MUST kill all the enemies that appear. The best way
to rid them all quickly is to use the Atlas Quake and lots of hard
combos. Also use the hammer and pound the enemies down to shorten the
herd. Once the enemies are all dead, the spikes retract. WHEW!

Now go through the doorway and head up the stairs.

———————————————————————–
———————————————————————–

+++ AREA: GARDEN OF THE GODS +++

Enter the garden to see some familiar looking statues. There is a hard-
to-see chest in the corner of the garden that has a Phoenix Feather and
some blood. When you’re done browsing, destroy the wall and enter.

It seems tempting to try and glide your way past each open gate but why
do you wanna do that? Simply approach the wall and let Kratos shimmy
all the way to the Save Point. Was it really that hard?

+++SECRET CHESTS:
As you shimmy on the ledge, you’ll notice that there are two red chests
behind the metal bar windows. To access them, shimmy towards the third
metal bar window and jump down to a secret lower ledge. Climb the
ladder up and get the goodies!

SAVE GAME!

–MISSION OBJECTIVE: SACRIFICE THREE SIRENS

Go down the large chain and jump down. For this section, you must kill
three sirens using the flames activated by the levers. When you
activate the lever on the right, the flames come from the left side and
if you activate the lever on the left side, the flames come from the
right side. Understand how it works?

Attack and damage the siren until she is weakened (the Circle Button
appears above her head). You must weaken her near the walls! When she
is dazed, approach the lever on the opposite side and activate it to
burn her alive. Kill two more sirens this way to open up the door. It
will take a few tries to get it right, but keep going! You made it this
far, didn’t ya?

When the large doorway opens, head inside and open the green chest.
Jump into the bloody water and swim to the other side. Avoid the spikes
and then emerge out of the water. As soon as you jump out, head TOWARDS
the TV screen to find two well-hidden blood chests. Now enter the next
room for a new puzzle!

+++THE FROZEN EAGLE PUZZLE SOLUTION:
This puzzle is also quite tedious but fun to figure out. In the room
are three levers on the right side, some frozen walls, and a frozen
eagle statue in the center of the room.

First thing to do is to jump down to the eagle statue. Behind the
statue is a lever that makes the eagle statue breathe fire every time
you pull it. Activate the lever to melt the ice wall across from it and
reveal a large globe-like mirror.

Do not grab the mirror yet! Jump to the top and look for the wall that
you can scale. Scale the wall to the top and then scale the ceiling.
There a couple of icicle stalactites on the ceiling that you can
attack. The only stalactite that you need to destroy is the one that is
directly above the entrance doorway that you came from. Once the icicle
stalactite is destroyed, it will reveal a light source beam from above.
Jump down and grab the mirror and drag it under the light beam. Notice
how the light beam is shining towards the symbol on the left side when
you place the mirror there? You need to somehow reflect that light!

Make your way towards the three levers. Each lever rotates the symbols
in a circular direction. When you grab the lever, the camera angle will
show you the symbol in the middle. Rotate all three levers until you
can match the symbol of a big fat half moon. When done correctly, the
light will reflect and melt all the ice off the eagle statue. GOOD JOB!

Now jump to the statue and grab the turnstile. When you turn the lever,
you can position the statue towards each ice wall and melt the ice off
(by activating the lever behind the statue). The only ice wall that you
really need to melt is the exit door. If you want to melt the rest of
the ice walls, that’s up to you. You’ll find lots of chests (one of
them has a Phoenix Feather) and some un-frozen minotaurs. When you’re
done melting all the ice, exit the room to the next area.

———————————————————————–
———————————————————————–

+++ AREA: HARPIE NEST +++

Go around the corner and jump down to a room with a turnstile and three
large harpie nests. Destroy the nearby harpie nest and then scale the
wall to the top. Scale the ceiling and destroy the other two nests
while killing the harpies. Once the area is clear, jump down and turn
the turnstile until the grip holder from above stops.

Quickly double jump towards it and hang on as it slowly ascends to the
upper area. When you reach the top, jump off and head for the next
area. Open the two chests while you’re at it!

+++MINI-BOSS BATTLE: HELLHOUND CERBERUS + MINI-HOUNDS + BERZERKERS
Oh god, ANOTHER Cerberus fight? Goddamn it. Unlike the other Cerberus
fight, you cannot grab the small hounds and kick them at Cerberus.
Instead, you’ll need to be defensive and use hard combos on it. Four
Cerberus hounds will appear. Kill them off and then kill the two
berserkers using the spear. Perform fatalities on everyone to clear the
area and open a new path.

Enter the hall and take the hard-to-see ladder going to the Save Point.

SAVE GAME!

Now open the next doorway and jump down.

———————————————————————–
———————————————————————–

+++ AREA: AUDITORIUM OF ATROPOS +++

+++THE TIME CONTINUUM PUZZLE SOLUTION:
See that statue with the Amulet medallion? Grab the statue and drag it
with you to the end of the hall. Place the statue to the left or right
of the gate and then pull the lever to open the gate.

Drag the statue under the gate so that it doesn’t close. Walk towards
that watery-looking blob on the left and enter through it to be
transported back to a few seconds ago before the translator guy jumped
off the ledge. When you run through the watery blob thingie,
immediately activate the Amulet and then run towards the translator and
grab him before he jumps off. If you miss, just keep doing it again
until you get it right!

Drag the translator to the book and handle him the same way you did
with the other translator. After the cutscene, approach the door on the
right and grab the key item.

+++KEY ITEM ACQUIRED: THE WARRIOR’S SKULL

Enter the door to encounter another puzzle!

+++THE STEAM VENT PUZZLE SOLUTION:
Here’s how it works: rotate the turnstile all the way until it stops.
This will release some steam from the vent underneath. Double jump to
unflap your wings and float higher. Glide to the upper ledge and
QUICKLY activate the next lever to unleash more steam. Quickly unflap
your wings while the large amount of steam rises and let Kratos float
all the way to the ledge on the upper left side (you won’t be able to
float high enough to reach the ceiling, so float to the upper left).
This will take a few tries to get it right, so get to it!

Now jump to the ceiling and scale all the way to the other side and
then jump down. Enter the next room with the turnstile and rotate the
lever to descend to the bottom. Jump and glide out back to…

———————————————————————–
———————————————————————–

+++ AREA: THE PALACE COURTYARD +++

As soon as you land on the courtyard, two Cyclops enemies will appear.
Hopefully, you’ve perfected your Cyclops-killing skills by now.
Eliminate both the Cyclops with fatalities and then two more Cyclops
will show up. Dispose of them with Rage of the Titans and then perform
the fatalities on them to clear the area.

Now head for the doorway with the Cerberus symbol on it and place the
key item to unlock the door. Open the door and enter to find some
chests and a Save Point.

SAVE GAME!

This next part is quite intense and requires you to be on your toes!
Approach the large chain in the center of the room and press R1 to grab
hold and then rapidly tap the Circle Button to make Kratos manually
drag the platform down like an elevator.

As you descend, a spiked ceiling will start coming down slowly and
skeleton warriors will begin attacking you. Use the Atlas Quake and the
hammer to pound them down. Kill the skeleton guys and continue dragging
the elevator. You will have to keep doing this until you reach the
bottom of the floor, so abuse the Atlas Quake as much as possible!

Once you reach the bottom, approach the door and quickly open it and
then roll outside to safety! Before taking the stairway up, there are
two well-hidden chests just near the door you exited from. One of them
has a Phoenix Feather, so grab it.

———————————————————————–
———————————————————————–

+++ AREA: ENTRANCE TO THE UNDERGROUND +++

Enter the next area and you will see a long zipline with some enemies
that are already crawling on it. Use the Bane on them and then jump to
the zipline and work your way to the center platform and jump down
before the archers shoot you down.

Jump towards the archers and shimmy to the right and then climb up.
Destroy all the archers and gorgons that appear. Once the area is
cleared, jump back down and look for a wall to scale on the left side
of the center platform. Quickly scale to the top and scale the ceiling
to the other side quickly! Eliminate the soldiers that appear to clear
this area. Go down the hall to a new area.

———————————————————————–
———————————————————————–

+++ AREA: THE PHOENIX HALL +++

Approach the pedestal and read the book. This will reveal a lever on
the other side. DO NOT activate the lever yet! There is a Save Point on
the upper right side, so jump and glide towards the Save Point first!

SAVE GAME!

Now jump and glide to the ledge on the other side to encounter some
skeletal warriors and a satyr. Defeat them with the Atlas Quake and
some hard combos to clear the area. Enter the next room to find a ton
of spikes and a lever.

+++THE HEAVY SPIKES PUZZLE SOLUTION:
This room has a TON of sharp spikes! Activate the lever to lower the
spikes and then approach the dead soldier to find the Hail Of Boreas
key item. Run back to the lever before the spikes protrude. When the
spikes have protruded, activate the lever again and then approach the
wall next to the dead soldier and bust it open to find two chests, an
Amulet statue, and two satyr enemies.

Do not open the chests yet! Head back to the lever before the spikes
protrude and fight the satyrs near the lever. When the area is clear,
activate the lever and approach the turnstile. Rotate it 360 degrees
and then activate the Amulet. Quickly escape this room through the door
on the other side!

As you enter the next area, look up near the wall with the flowing lava
to see a ledge that you can jump and shimmy on. Jump up to it and then
jump to the opposite ledge. Jump down to the other side to find three
well-hidden blood chests! Enter the next area for another puzzle!

+++THE WALL OF FIRE PUZZLE SOLUTION:
When you enter the room, a large wall of fire will come straight at you
every few seconds nonstop. To avoid getting burnt, go back to the
entrance doorway and grab the statue on the left side. Drag it with you
from the front to stay safe from the flames.

As you drag it to the front of the room, a bunch of fireproof satyrs
and harpies will emerge to try and stop you. Use the Atlas Quake or
Rage of Cronos to stop them and continue dragging the large statue to
the front. There are two large side doors in the room: one on the left
and one on the right. Each one of them has two chests with goodies (one
with a Phoenix Feather) inside. If you want to grab them, that’s
completely up to you.

Continue dodging the enemies while dragging the statue to the front.
Place it in front of the lever and then pull the lever to lower the
floor blocking the way. Drag and place the statue on the left button
and then stand on the right button to lower a grip holder. Quickly jump
and swing to the top ledge! Grab the Ashes of the Phoenix and the
platform will lower you back to the Phoenix Chamber. Drag the large urn
to the center of the walkway and then go back to the Save Point area.

Kill all the minotaurs and skeletal enemies that appear to clear the
area. Now approach the lever and activate it to trigger the
resurrection of the Phoenix. After the cutscene, jump and glide to the
top stairway and take it all the way to the top. Ignore the soldiers
and then activate the lever to ascend back to the Palace Courtyard.

———————————————————————–
———————————————————————–

+++ AREA: PALACE COURTYARD +++

After you ascend to the courtyard, place the Hail Of Boreas key item on
the wall behind the lever you just used. This will open a new doorway.
Enter inside and make a left turn. Open the chests in the area and then
climb the chain to the top floor and you will see a Save Point.

SAVE GAME!

Now head for the large horn and press the R1 Button to release the
Phoenix. Jump down to the courtyard and jump onto the large pedestal on
the left side and then jump and glide to the door. Open it to reveal a
new puzzle.

+++THE CHAINS AND PILLAR PUZZLE SOLUTION:
Activate the lever to raise a large wall. Scale that wall to the top
and then scale the ceiling. Go to the second chain and cut it down to
reveal a pillar. Jump down and activate the lever again to lower the
wall and make some enemies appear. Kill the exploding soldiers and then
grab the pillar.

Place the pillar halfway through the wall. When you activate the lever
again, the pillar will stop the wall halfway as it rises up. Jump up to
the top of the rising wall and then drag the pillar away to make the
wall rise up all the way. Now place the pillar near the metal door and
jump on top of it. Destroy the large chain above the door to lower it.

Now head for the nearby turnstile and rotate it all the way. Once
that’s done, go down the hall and rotate the next turnstile until a
doorway open up. Enter the all to face off against an old ally.

+++MINI-BOSS BATTLE: THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER
The soldier is pretty aggressive and relies mostly on hard sword
slashes. Your best bet is to block using the Fleece and then counter
with some hard combos of your own. This is pretty much a battle of
strength and whoever has the hardest combos wins. When the Circle
Button appears above his head, press it to end the battle and to
trigger a heartbreaking cutscene. This then triggers a new boss battle.

+++BOSS BATTLE: THE KRAKEN
Wait, isn’t the Kraken a pirate myth? What the hell is it doing in a
game about Greek mythology? Or am I watching too much Pirates Of The
Caribbean? Whatever.

At the beginning of the battle, Kratos is pretty immobile and slow. Let
the Kraken grab Kratos to trigger a cutscene. After the cutscene, you
will receive a new power upgrade for Rage Of The Titans. When prompted,
activate Rage to begin the battle.

WAVE 1: You must damage the Kraken’s tentacle that is holding the
pillar on the LEFT side. Your main strategy here is quick evasion. The
Kraken loves to slap its tentacles around and loves to puke a bunch of
acid so stay evasive! Damage its tentacle on the left side to make it
reveal a step button. Grab the dead soldier’s body and place it on the
button to open a steam vent in the center of the arena.

With the steam vent open, unflap your wings and glide towards the
Kraken’s head and start unleashing a barrage of hard attacks on the
head to damage it. When Kratos falls back to the ground, he can still
use the vent two more times before it closes back up. Keep this
strategy going while staying evasive and the Kraken will soon get
stunned. Once it’s been stunned, it will slam its large crab-leg
tentacle onto the middle of the arena. Approach the leg and climb it to
the top and start slashing at the leg joint. Keep slashing at it and
the Circle Button will appear. Quickly press it to slice off the
tentacle in bloody fashion.

WAVE 2: For this wave, the strategy is still the same. Damage the
tentacles on the left pillar, place the dead body on the button, fly
from the steam vent, damage the boss’s head, repeat. Once it’s been
stunned after many combos to the head, it will slam its OTHER crab-leg
tentacle across the arena. Double jump upwards toward the leg to
grapple onto it and then scale your way to the leg joint and start
slashing away at it. When the Circle Button appears, press it to slice
off the tentacle.

WAVE 3: With both crab-leg tentacles gone, its time for some real
damage! The boss will start slamming his tentacles on each side. When
it starts slamming its tentacles from the right pillar, run to the left
pillar and damage the tentacle there. When it starts slamming its
tentacles from the left pillar, run to the pillar on the right and
damage the tentacles there. Understand the pattern? After much damage
to a specific tentacle (left or right), it will begin to slip off. When
both tentacles are damaged, the Kraken will try to hold onto the
balcony for dear life.

Quickly approach the lever at the top of the arena and activate it to
end this battle. If you didn’t activate the lever in time, repeat the
strategy until you get it right!

After the battle, go down the bridge and over the Kraken’s carcass.
Press the Circle Button to wrangle up the Phoenix! YEEEEHAAWWW!!!!
Press the buttons and rotate the analog stick in the direction
indicated onscreen to fly off to the next area!

———————————————————————–
———————————————————————–

+++ AREA: TEMPLE OF THE FATES +++

Swim your way towards the Save Point.

SAVE GAME!

After saving your game, jump towards the large statue face. Press the
R1 Button on the ledge to grapple to a higher ledge. Press the Circle
button to drop down and then destroy the pillar to release the green
energy flowing through the room and bring it back to normal.

+++DING DONG DITCH PUZZLE SOLUTION:
Notice that there are two huge bells in the room. There is one on the
left that you can ring by smacking a large bell ringer and then there
is a bell on the right side that you can manually ring.

Also, underneath the pedestal is a turnstile and a lever under the
water that can be activated. Here’s how it works: after getting rid of
the “green” energy in the room, rotate the turnstile counter-clockwise
until you see the object in the water positioned at a five o’clock
position. Now dive under the water and activate the lever and the
pedestal will rise and fit into it.

Now, you have to ring both of the bells at the same time. Jump and
grapple back to the top of the pedestal and press the R1 Button to get
the bell ringer to slam the bell. Quickly activate the Amulet and then
glide to the other bell and press the R1 Button and the L1 + R1 Buttons
to manually ring the other bell. If done correctly, the statue face
will become partially cracked. Now jump down to the turnstile and
rotate the pedestal so that the bell ringer is in FRONT of the statue
face. GO back to the top and activate the bell ringer to smash the
statue face to reveal a new path. Enter the next area to a circular
room. Open the chest on the left and then open the door.

———————————————————————–
———————————————————————–

+++ AREA: THRONE OF LAHKESIS +++

You’re almost done, dude!

+++BOSS BATTLE: LAHKESIS – PART 1

WAVE 1: The boss hovers around the arena and has four attacks: a triple
swipe melee attack, multiple fireballs, a boomerang attack, and a
ground pound. Simply block her melee attacks and block the fireballs
with the Fleece. The timing is quite difficult with the Fleece, so try
some quick evasive rolls or double jumps if you can’t deflect her
fireballs. When she hovers above the ground, she will pound on it, so
either roll away or use the grapple holders on the ceiling.

Inflict your hardest combos on her while being defensive. Whittle her
health down and the first part of the battle will be quite easy.

WAVE 2: The boss will start to hover higher and begins electrifying the
floor. This part of the battle involves aerial combat, so grapple above
and attack the boss while holding on.

Jump from grapple to grapple while attacking her to avoid getting
damaged. As the boss loses more of her health her attacks become faster
and more intense. Keep the same strategy going until the Circle button
appears above her head. Grapple and jump towards her and press the
button to end the battle.

+++BOSS BATTLE: ATROPOS
This battle is not quite so difficult once you figure it out. The boss
will fling slow fireballs at you which can be evaded with the Fleece or
quick evasion. Fire the Typhon Bane at her until your Magic meter
depletes. Kill the soldiers to restore magic and health and keep firing
the Bane until she goes to the other end of the arena.

At the other end of the arena, she will begin regenerating her health
so run up to her and inflict hard combos on her. Repeat the strategy 2-
3 times and then the Circle Button will appear above her head. Press
the button and then follow the buttons indicated onscreen to end the
battle in bloody fashion.

+++BOSS BATTLE: LAHKESIS & ATROPOS

WAVE 1: Get ready for a very long and intense battle! Damage Lahkesis
the same way you did in the previous battle until Atropos appears. The
main point of the battle is to shatter both of the mirrors on the left
and right side. Use the grapples to avoid the constant barrage of
fireballs from Atropos and continue the assault on Lahkesis.

Once Lahkesis has been stunned, she will keel over and start glowing
green. Activate the Amulet and quickly approach Atropos and start
slashing your hardest combos at her. After much damage, Atropos will
slide back into the mirror. When that happens, smash the mirror!

Repeat the strategy for the opposite mirror. Keep attacking Lahkesis
until she keels over (be sure to grapple above for safety reasons) and
then damage Atropos by using the Amulet. When Atropos slides back into
the mirror; smash it down to finish off this wave.

WAVE 2: Once Lahkesis is by herself, she will hover in front of the
last mirror. She begins performing more attacks to protect herself.
Evade the fireballs and continue pounding the hard combos until the
Circle button appears above her head. Press the buttons indicated for a
spectacular and bloody finish to both of the sisters!

With both boss’s dead like a mutherf*cker, approach the Save Point.

SAVE GAME!

Enter the next area to a circular room. Uh-oh! You’re stuck! WHAT DO I
DO??? There is a wall in the center of the room that you can scale.
Climb it to the top and scale the ceiling. To reach the blood chests
that you see on both sides of the room, scale all the way to the back
of the room and jump down to the ledge below. Jump and glide to each
ledge to grab the goodies. Now enter the hall and destroy the wall on
the right.

———————————————————————–
———————————————————————–

+++ AREA: THE INNER SANCTUM +++

It’s time for bloody battle royale against every single enemy that
you’ve encountered (well, not everyone but most of them). Hopefully,
you’ve upgraded all of your weapons and magic to the max!

As you descend towards Clotho, you will encounter numerous waves of
enemy after enemy. The first couple of waves will be soldiers and
satyrs, then satyrs and minotaurs, then a bunch of gorgons, and then
minotaurs and berserkers. Kill all the enemies that appear as you make
your way down the spiral. Stay evasive and be sure to BLOCK! Keep
descending the spiral until you reach the door at the bottom. For the
last wave of enemies, it’ll be 3-4 cyclops and a bunch of soldiers.
Kill them all to unlock the door and reveal a new Save Point.

SAVE GAME!

To enter the large door, attack the hands that are holding the lock.
Press the R1 Button to unlatch each lock and then enter through.

———————————————————————–
———————————————————————–

+++ AREA: THE LOOM CHAMBER +++

As you approach the walkway, you will see Clotho’s skinny hands moving
to attack you. On the left side of the area is a turnstile. Attack her
arm to stun it and then rotate the lever all the way until the gate
above opens. Now approach the nearby stairs and glide to the cage. Open
the chest inside and then scale the wall above to the other side.

Approach the other metal gate and destroy the statues in front of it.
Now jump down and stun her arm and then rotate the turnstile all the
way to open up the gate and reveal a chain to climb. Approach the
nearby stairs and glide to the gate. Open the chest inside and climb up
the chain to the next area.

Now comes a pretty straightforward puzzle.

+++THE LEVERS AND SPEARS PUZZLE SOLUTION:
As soon as you emerge from the next room, you will notice that Clotho
has three arms. You need to pin down each arm to get to the next area
(similar to the Hydra battle from the first game).

Notice that there is a step-button device with a lever nearby. DO NOT
TOUCH THIS DEVICE YET! Approach the lever that is surrounded by spikes
to open up a trap door on the floor next to her arm. (There is a hidden
chest in there if you want it.) Damage the arm so that it get stunned
and is resting in the trap door. Go back to the lever and activate it
to close the trap door and pin her first arm.

For the second arm, damage it to stun it and then climb the nearby
chain to the top and then jump to the ledge with the lever. Activate
the lever to drop a large spear on her arm to pin it down. It will take
a few tries, so get it done!

For the third arm, you will need that step-button device. Head for the
device and then grab the lever and drag it all the way around to
towards her third arm. Damage her arm to stun it and keep dragging the
device all the way down until it locks into the nearby spear. Damage
her arm again, and then drag the spear under her arm. Jump up and
attack the spear to pin her third arm. Now climb the chain up and jump
to the last ledge and activate the lever.

+++BOSS BATTLE: CLOTHO
This battle is actually quite easy. You can block her ground pounds
with the Fleece and you can simply double jump her arm swipe, that’s
pretty much your defensive strategy. You really don’t need to use the
Amulet statues in this battle. Notice that there are two levers in the
arena: one on the lower left and one on the lower right. If you pull
each one, it will bring up a dead body and place it in front of Clotho.
She will then pound it and unleash massive green health. Also, take
notice that on the right side near the Amulet statue is a turnstile
handle that you can grab and push around the arena.

Here’s the strategy: damage Clotho’s arms to stun her. When one arm is
stunned, damage the other one to fully stun her. Now go to the right
side where the Amulet statue is and grab the turnstile handle next to
the door. As you try to drag it, there will be dead bodies above
blocking the turnstile’s path. Use an Atlas Quake under the bodies to
rid of them. If Clotho recovers, stun her again and then access the
turnstile and push it down until the lower right lever (that you used
to bring up the dead body) is in the center of the arena.

When Clotho recovers, damage her arms again and then activate the lever
in the center of the arena to bring up a large sharp pendulum. When the
pendulum is in front of her, grab the handle on it and rotate it so the
blade faces her body. Now move to the side of the blade and press the
button to trigger a bloody kill sequence. Press the buttons shown
onscreen to kill this boss!

With the boss out for the count, go to the back room and activate the
lever to descend to the upper area. Swim though the corners (grab the
chest goodies on the ledge) and then access the Save Point.

SAVE GAME

Now pull the lever in front of the mirror to reveal some thread strands
in front of the boss. Go back to the arena where you fought the boss to
start weaving your fate.

–MISSION OBJECTIVE: WEAVE THE STRANDS

There are a bunch of strands in the room. If you pull the wrong one,
the mirror will crack. The strand you need to pull is the one located
to the right of the lever (that you used to bring up the pendulum).
Keep pressing the Circle Button until an hourglass timer appears. From
there, you have 30 seconds to get to the mirror.

Activate the Amulet and make your way back to the mirror. Jump through
the mirror to return to a familiar place.

———————————————————————–
———————————————————————–

+++ AREA: THE SUMMIT OF SACRIFICE +++

+++BOSS BATTLE: ZEUS
Now is the time to fight back! Give Zeus nothing and take from him
everything! Be sure to max out the Athena Blades and the Atlas Quake!

WAVE 1: This battle is similar to the Colossus battle. Zeus will throw
lightning bolts and slam his fist in to the ground. You need to damage
Zeus’s hand considerably. With all the Sirens in the way to distract
you, use the Atlas Quake to stun them and then grab them to kill them
when prompted. When the sirens are killed they unleash a small
aftershock that stuns Zeus and releases health and Magic. Keep killing
the Sirens if you need to restore health and Magic.

Evade Zeus’s lightning bolts and then roll away when he pounds the
ground. With his fist on the pavement, damage the hand. When the hand
has been damaged enough, the Circle Button will appear above it. Press
the button to finish this wave.

WAVE 2: Zeus is now back to normal size. Zeus is quite agile and has
some powerful lightning attacks. Use the Fleece and counter at Zeus
with lots of hard combos. Stay defensive while being evasive and
continue to pound the combos. Activate Rage if you need to. Once Zeus
grabs hold of you, he will take the Blade Of Olympus away from you.
From there, keep up the same strategy of defense and continue using
hard combos and the Atlas Quake to whittle his health down.

After much damage has been dealt, Zeus will stand in the middle of the
arena dazed. Grab him to inflict some major damage. With Zeus stunned,
run up to the pillar next to him and grab it to smash it on him.

WAVE 3: Continue to damage Zeus with hard combos and the Atlas Quake.
After much damage is dealt, Zeus will grab the Blade Of Olympus again
from you and he will start glowing gold. Activate Rage of the Titans
and pound the combos on him nonstop until he goes to the center of the
arena. Press the Circle button and beat him to throw him back. Now
approach the pillar on the left side and press the R1 Button to smash
Zeus with it.

WAVE 4: Now comes the END! Kratos will pull a Trojan horse on Zeus!
Press the buttons indicated onscreen to end it all! You must be quick
with the last button (the Circle Button) or Zeus will grab the sword
and kill you. If that happens, you will have to start this wave over
again. Get it right and finish it!

Copy and paste this link to watch a High-Def video of how to finish the
last part of the Zeus battle (recorded by yours truly):

http://www.gametrailers.com/umwatcher.php?id=50332

———————————————————————–
———————————————————————–

+++ AREA: THE LOOM CHAMBER +++

After the cutscene, go back to the arena where Clotho is located. Weave
the strand of time until the timer starts. Use the Amulet and work your
way back to the mirror before time runs out to finish the game!

THE END BEGINS…

MON CONGRATS! You beat the game!

———————————————————————–
———————————————————————–

+++ THE UNLOCKABLES +++

–CHALLENGE OF THE TITANS
Finish the game to unlock this mode. There are 7 challenges in this
mode that test out your abilities. Defeat each challenge to gain a
ranking of Mortal, Spartan, God, or Titan.

–ARENA OF THE FATES
Receive a Titan ranking for all seven Challenge Of The Titans to unlock
this bonus. With this bonus, you can make your own Royal Rumble with
any enemies and specific settings.

–URNS OF POWER
There are six total urns to obtain: Gaia, Gorgons, Olympus, Prometheus,
Fates, and Poseidon. Four of them are obtained in the main game while
the other two have to be earned from Challenge of The Titans.

–BONUS COSTUMES 1 & 2
Beat the main game to unlock a fish costume and the Hydra Armor.

–BONUS COSTUMES 3-5
Beat Titan Mode to unlock the Dark Armor, the Athena skin, and the
Hercules skin.

–BONUS COSTUME 6
Collect 20 of the Cyclops eyes in repeat playthroughs to unlock Kratos’
human form before he became a god.

–BONUS COSTUME 7
Achieve a God or Titan ranking in all seven challenges for the
Challenge of the Titans to unlock the armor that Kratos wore at the
beginning of the game.

–IN-GAME MOVIES – HIGH RESOLUTION

–IN-GAME MOVIES – STORY FORMAT

–CREDITS

Do I need to explain all of the content that is on Disc 2? Nah. You can
do it yourself. Be sure to finish the game first BEFORE watching the
second disc because there is an assload of major spoilers!

———————————————————————–
———————————————————————–

+++ CHALLENGE OF THE TITANS +++

Are you up to it? Ready for some action?

BULLETPROOF STRATEGIES COMING SOON!

———————————————————————–
———————————————————————–

This FAQ is only for use on GameFAQS. You may not copy, reproduce, or
link to this FAQ without permission. If you want to use this FAQ on
your website or publication, please e-mail me at kroqjock@gmail.com. I
have no problems with anyone who asks. March 2007.

God of War II: FAQ/Walkthrough by VampireHorde
Last Updated 2007-03-19 View/Download Original File
Hosted by GameFAQs
Return to God of War II (PS2) FAQs & Guides

Sketches of Church History, from AD 33 to the Reformation

Sketches of Church History, from AD 33 to the Reformation
by
J. C. Robertson
About Sketches of Church History, from AD 33 to the Reformation by J. C.
Robertson
Sketches of Church History, from AD 33 to the Reformation Title:
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/robertson/history.html URL:
Roberston, J. C. Author(s):
Grand Rapids, MI: Christian Classics Ethereal Library Publisher:
New York: Edwin S. Gorham, 1904 Print Basis:
Public Domain Rights:
2004-08-30 Date Created:
James E. Kiefer, 5/28/96 (Digitizer) Contributor(s):
All; History CCEL Subjects:
BR162 LC Call no:
Christianity LC Subjects:
History
By period
Early and medieval
Table of Contents
p. ii About This Book. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
p. 1 Title Page. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
p. 2 Contents. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
p. 14 Part I. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
p. 14 Chapter 1. The Age of the Apostles (A.D. 33–100). . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
p. 16 Chapter 2. St. Ignatius (AD 116. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
p. 18 Chapter 3. St. Justin Martyr (AD 166). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
p. 20 Chapter 4. St. Polycarp (AD 166). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
p. 21 Chapter 5. The Martyrs of Lyons and Vienne (AD 177). . . . . . . . . . . .
p. 22 Chapter 6. Tertullian; Perpetua and Companions (AD 181–206. . . . . .
p. 24 Chapter 7. Origen (AD 185–254). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
p. 26 Chapter 8. St. Cyprian, Part I (AD 200–253). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
p. 29
Chapter 9. From Gallienus to the End of the Last Persecution (AD
261–313). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
p. 33 Chapter 10. Constantine the Great (AD 313–337). . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
p. 35 Chapter 11. The Council of Nicaea (AD 325). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
p. 37 Chapter 12. St. Athanasius. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
p. 43 Chapter 13. The Monks.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
p. 47
Chapter 14. St. Basil and St. Gregory of Naziansum; Council of
Constantinople. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
p. 50 Chapter 15. St. Ambrose (AD 374–397. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
p. 52 Chapter 16. The Temple of Serapis (AD 391). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
p. 54 Chapter 17. Church Government.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
p. 56 Chapter 18. Christian Worship. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
p. 60 Chapter 19. Arcadius and Honorius (AD 395–423). . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
p. 62 Chapter 20. St. John Chrysostom (AD 347–407). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
p. 68 Chapter 21. St. Augustine (AD 354–430). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
p. 79 Chapter 22. Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon (AD 431–451). . . . . .
p. 80 Chapter 23. Fall of the Western Empire (AD 451–476). . . . . . . . . . . .
p. 81 Chapter 24. Conversion of the Barbarians; Christianity in Britain. . . . . .
p. 82 Chapter 25. Scotland and Ireland. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
p. 84 Chapter 26. Clovis (AD 496). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
p. 86 Chapter 27. Justinian (AD 527–565). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
p. 87 Chapter 28. Nestorians and Monophysites.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
p. 88 Chapter 29. St. Benedict (AD 480–529). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
iii
J. C. Robertson Sketches of Church History, from AD 33 to the Reformation
p. 90 Chapter 30. End of the Sixth Century. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
p. 92 Chapter 31. St Gregory the Great (AD 540–604). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
p. 99 Part II. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
p. 99 Chapter 1. Mahometanism; Image-Worship (AD 612–794). . . . . . . . . .
p. 100 Chapter 2. The Church in England (AD 604–734). . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
p. 101 Chapter 3. St. Boniface (AD 680–755. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
p. 103 Chapter 4. Pipin and Charles the Great (AD 741–814). . . . . . . . . . . .
p. 105 Chapter 5. Decay of Charles the Great’s Empire (AD 814–887). . . . . .
p. 106 Chapter 6. State of the Papacy (AD 891–1046). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
p. 107 Chapter 7. Missions of the Ninth and Tenth Centuries. . . . . . . . . . . . .
p. 110 Chapter 8. Pope Gregory the Seventh. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
p. 114 Chapter 9. The First Crusade (AD 1095–1099). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
p. 117 Chapter 10. New Orders of Monks; Military Orders. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
p. 120 Chapter 11. St. Bernard (AD 1091–1153). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
p. 122
Chapter 12. Adrian IV; Alexander III; Becket; The Third Crusade (AD
1153–1192). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
p. 124 Chapter 13. Innocent the Third (AD 1198–1216). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
p. 129 Chapter 14. Frederick II; St. Lewis of France (AD 1220–1270). . . . . . .
p. 131 Chapter 15. Peter of Murrone (AD 1294). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
p. 133 Chapter 16. Boniface VIII. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
p. 135
Chapter 17. The Popes at Avignon; the Ruin of the Templars (AD
1303–1312). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
p. 138 Chapter 18. The Popes at Avignon (continued) (AD 1314–1352). . . . . .
p. 139 Chapter 19. Religious Sects and Parties. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
p. 140 Chapter 20. John Wyclif (AD c1324–1384). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
p. 142 Chapter 21. The Popes Return to Rome (AD 1367–1377). . . . . . . . . .
p. 142 Chapter 22. The Great Schism (AD 1378–1410). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
p. 143 Chapter 23. John Huss (AD 1369–1414). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
p. 145 Chapter 24. The Council of Constance (AD 1414–1417). . . . . . . . . . .
p. 147 Chapter 25. The Hussites (AD 1418–1431). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
p. 148 Chapter 26. Councils of Basel and Florence (AD 1431–9). . . . . . . . . .
p. 149 Chapter 27. Nicolas V and Pius II (AD 1447–1464). . . . . . . . . . . . . .
p. 151 Chapter 28. Jerome Savonarola (AD 1452–1498). . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
p. 153 Chapter 29. Julius II and Leo X (AD 1503–1521). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
p. 154 Chapter 30. Missions; The Inquisition. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
p. 157 Indexes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
p. 157 Index of Scripture References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
p. 158 Index of Pages of the Print Edition. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
iv
J. C. Robertson Sketches of Church History, from AD 33 to the Reformation
SKETCHES OF CHURCH HISTORY.
From AD 33 to the Reformation
by the late REV. J. C ROBERTSON, M.A., CANON OF CANTERBURY,
PUBLISHED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE TRACT COMMITTEE, LONDON:
SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE,
NORTHUMBERLAND AVENUE, CHARING CROSS, W.C.;
43, QUEEN VICTORIA STREET, E.C.
NEW YORK: EDWIN S. GORHAM.
1904
J. C. Robertson Sketches of Church History, from AD 33 to the Reformation
C O N T E N T S.
PAGE CHAPTER
PART I
1 The Age of the Apostles 1.
5 St. Ignatius 2.
10 St. Justin, Martyr 3.
13 St. Polycarp 4.
15 The Martyrs of Lyons and
Vienne
5.
17 Tertullian—Perpetua and her
Companions
6.
21 Origen 7.
25 St Cyprian—Part I 8.
27 —Part II
29 —Part III
31 The Last Persecution 9.
38 Constantine the Great 10.
43 The Council of Nicaea 11.
47 St. Athanasius—Part I 12.
51 —Part II
54 —Part III
59 The Monks 13.
67 St. Basil and St. Gregory of
Naz.—Part I
14.
70 —Part II
73 St. Ambrose 15.
77 The Temple of Serapis 16.
80 Church Government 17.
85 Christian Worship—Part I 18.
87 —Part II
90 —Part III
93 Arcadius and Honorius 19.
95 St. John Chrysostom—Part I 20.
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J. C. Robertson Sketches of Church History, from AD 33 to the Reformation
100 —Part II
103 —Part III
105 —Part IV
108 St. Augustine—Part I 21.
111 —Part II
114 —Part III (Donatism)
118 —Part IV
120 —Part V
124 —Part VI (Pelagianism)
127 —Part VII
128 Councils of Ephesus and
Chalcedon
22.
131 Fall of the Western Empire 23.
133 Conversion of the
Barbarians—Christianity
in Britain
24.
136 Scotland and Ireland 25.
140 Clovis. 26.
142 Justinian 27.
144 Nestorians and Monophysites 28.
147 St. Benedict—Part I 29.
150 —Part II
152 End of the Sixth
Century—Part I
30.
154 —Part II
156 St. Gregory the Great—Part
I
31.
159 —Part II
160 —Part III
163 —Part IV
PART II
169 Mahometanism; Image
worship
1.
71 The Church in England 2.
73 St. Boniface 3.
3
J. C. Robertson Sketches of Church History, from AD 33 to the Reformation
77 Pipin and Charles the
Great—Part I
4.
79 —Part II
81 Decay of Charles the Great’s
Empire
5.
84 State of the Papacy 6.
85 Missions of the Ninth and
Tenth Centuries
7.
91 Pope Gregory VII —Part I 8.
93 —Part II
94 —Part III
96 —Part IV
98 The First Crusade—Part I 9.
201 —Part II
204 —Part III
205 N e w O r d e r s o f
Monks—Military Orders
10.
211 St. Bernard—Part I 11.
213 —Part II
214 Adrian IV. 12.
—Alexander III.
—Becket.
—The Third Crusade
217 Innocent III—Part I 13.
220 —Part II
223 —Part III
225 —Part IV
228 Frederick II—St. Lewis of
France—Part I
14.
229 —Part II
232 Peter of Murrone 15.
235 Boniface VIII—Part I 16.
236 —Part II
The Popes at Avignon. 17.
239 —Ruin of the
Templars—Part I
4
J. C. Robertson Sketches of Church History, from AD 33 to the Reformation
241 —Part II
245 The Popes at Avignon
(continued)
18.
247 Religious Parties 19.
249 John Wyclif 20.
252 The Popes return to Rome 21.
254 The Great Schism 22.
256 John Huss 23.
258 The Council of
Constance—Part I
24.
260 —Part II
261 —Part III
263 The Hussites 25.
265 Councils of Basel and
Florence
26.
268 Nicolas V and Pius II 27.
271 Jerome Savonarola—Part I 28.
273 —Part II
275 Julius II and Leo X. 29.
277 Missions—The Inquisition 30.
TABLE OF DATES
PART I
PAGE A.D.
1 Descent of the Holy Ghost On
the Day of Pentecost
33.
3 Martyrdom of St. James the
Less
62.
2 Persecution by Nero begins 64.
2 Martyrdom of St. Peter and
St. Paul
68.
3 Destruction of Jerusalem by
Titus
70.
3 Persecution by Domitian 95.
5 Death of St. John 100.
9 Martyrdom of Ignatius 116.
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J. C. Robertson Sketches of Church History, from AD 33 to the Reformation
10-15 Martyrdoms of Justin and
Polycarp
166.
17 Montanus publishes his
heresy
168.
15 Persecution at Lyons and
Vienne
177.
18 Tertullian flourishes 190.
18 Persecution by Severus
begins
202.
21 Martyrdom of Origen’s father —.
18 Martyrdom of Perpetua and
her companions
206.
25 Cyprian, bishop of Carthage 248.
23 Persecution by Decius 249.
60 Paul, the first hermit 251.
27 Troubles at Carthage;
Novatian schism
—.
27 Plague at Carthage 253.
24 Death of Origen 254.
29 Disagreement between
Cyprian and Stephen of Rome
—.
29 Persecution by Valerian 257.
31 Martyrdom of Cyprian 258.
40 Conversion of the Goths
begins
260.
32 Valerian prisoner—Gallienus
tolerates Christians
261.
110 Manes publishes his heresy 270.
33 Diocletian requires idolatry
from soldiers, &c.,
298.
34 The last general persecution
begins
303.
44,116 Separation of the Donatists
from the Church
311.
38 End of the persecution 313.
117 Council of Arles about the
Donatists
314.
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J. C. Robertson Sketches of Church History, from AD 33 to the Reformation
44 Arius begins to publish his
heresy
319.
38 Constantine defeats Licinius,
declares self Christian
324.
46 The First General Council
held at Nicaea
325.
—Arius condemned
—The Nicene Creed
made
47 Athanasius, bishop of
Alexandria
326.
48 Council of Tyre 335.
49 Athanasius banished to
Treves
—.
50 Death of Arius 336.
51 Death of Constantine 337.
52 Athanasius restored to his see 338.
52 Second banishment of
Athanasius
341.
41 Persecution in Persia 343.
117 Revolt, defeat, and
banishment of the Donatists
347.
93 Ulfilas, bishop of the Goths 348.
52 Second return of St.
Athanasius
349.
53 Third exile of Athanasius 356.
61 Death of Antony the hermit —.
57 Julian emperor—Paganism
restored
361.
120 The Donatists recalled 362.
56 Athanasius restored, but again
banished
—.
57 Attempt to rebuild the
Temple of Jerusalem
—.
58 Death of Julian 363.
68 Basil, bishop of Caesarea, in
Cappadocia
370.
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J. C. Robertson Sketches of Church History, from AD 33 to the Reformation
69 Gregory of Nazianzum
consecrated bishop of Sasima
372.
59 Death of Athanasius 373.
73 Ambrose, bishop of Milan 374.
69 Gregory of Nazianzum goes
to Constantinople
378.
70 Theodosius, emperor 379.
70 Gregory, bishop of
Constantinople—Death of
Basil
380.
71 Second General Council
held at Constantinople
381.
— G r e g o r y
withdraws from his see
72 Execution of Priscillian 385.
113 Baptism of Augustine 387.
97 Sedition at Antioch —.
75 Massacre at Thessalonica,
repentance of Theodosius
390.
78 Destruction of the Temple Of
Serapis
391.
77 Death of Theodosius 395.
114 Augustine, bishop of Hippo —.
77 Death of Ambrose 397.
100 Chrysostom, bishop of
Constantinople
—.
124 Pelagius teaches his heresy at
Rome
400.
95 Death of Telemachus at
Rome
403.
105 C o u n c i l o f t h e
Oak—Chrysostom banished,
recalled
—.
106 Chrysostom banished to
Cucusus
404.
107 Death of Chrysostom 407.
135 The Romans withdraw from
Britain
409.
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J. C. Robertson Sketches of Church History, from AD 33 to the Reformation
93 Rome taken by Alaric 410.
125 Pelagius and Celestius in
Africa
—.
122 Conference with the Donatists
at Carthage
411.
136 Ninian bishop of Whithorn 412.
126 Councils in the Holy Land as
to Pelagius
415.
135 Pelagianism put down in
Britain by German & Lupus
429.
128 Death of Augustine 430.
129 Third General Council
held at Ephesus
431.
—Condemnation of
Nestorius
136 Death of Ninian—Patrick
goes into Ireland
432.
129 “Robber Council” meets at
Ephesus
449.
136 Landing of the Saxons in
England
—.
129 Fourth General Council
held at Chalcedon
451.
—Condemnation of
Eutyches
131 Attila in France—Deliverance
of Orleans
—.
132 Attila in Italy 452.
132 Rome plundered by Genseric 455.
133 End of the Western Empire 476.
144 Schism between Rome and
Constantinople
484–519.
138 Death of Patrick 493.
141 Conversion of Clovis 496.
142 Justinian, emperor 527.
143 The heathen schools of
Athens shut up
529.
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J. C. Robertson Sketches of Church History, from AD 33 to the Reformation
149 Benedict draws up his Rule
for monks
—.
145 Jacob leader of the
Monophysites
541.
145 Fifth General Council held at
Constantinople
553.
139 Columba settles at Iona 565.
142 Death of Justinian —.
134 Third Council of
Toledo—
589.
The Spanish Church
renounces Arianism
139 Columban goes into France —.
155 Gregory the Great, bishop of
Rome
590.
163 Mission of Augustine to
England
596.
164 Landing of Augustine in
Kent
597.
—Conversion of
Ethelbert
166 Deaths of Gregory and
Augustine
604.
PART II
205 Missionary labours of St
Columban
589–615.
169 Mahomet begins to publish
his religion
612.
169 Jerusalem taken by the
Mussulmans
627.
169 Death of Mahomet. 632.
172 Settlement of Scottish
missionaries in Holy Island
635.
172 Council of Whitby 664.
170 Beginning of controversy as
to images
724.
174 Victory of Charles Martel
over the Saracens
—.
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J. C. Robertson Sketches of Church History, from AD 33 to the Reformation
173 Death of the Venerable Bede 734.
174 Missionary Labours of St
Boniface
715–755.
177 Pipin becomes king of the
Franks
752.
180 Second Council of Nicaea 787.
180 Council of Frankfort 794.
178 Charles the Great crowned as
emperor
800.
192 Forgery of Constantine’s
donation (approx.)
—.
181 Death of Charles the Great 814.
187 Missionary labours of Anskar 826–865.
192 Forgery of the False Decretals
(approx.)
846.
185 Conversion of Bulgarians,
Moravians, Bohemians, &c
860–870.
206 Foundation of the Order of
Cluny
912.
183 Otho I, emperor 962.
188 Conversion of Basil, great
prince of Russia
988.
184 Sylvester II, pope 999.
189 Conversion of Norwegians. 994–1030.
185 Council of Sutri 1046.
193 Pope Leo IX.— Beginning of
Hildebrand’s influence over
the papacy
1048.
193 Hildebrand elected pope
(Gregory VII )
1073.
207 Foundation of the Carthusian
Order
1074.
197 Death of Gregory VII 1085.
208 Foundation of the Cistercian
Order
1098.
202 Jerusalem taken in the First
Crusade
1099.
11
J. C. Robertson Sketches of Church History, from AD 33 to the Reformation
209 Order of St John (or
Hospitallers) founded
1113.
210 Order of the Temple founded 1116.
198 Agreement between pope and
emperor at Worms
1123.
213 The Second Crusade 1147–1149.
214 Death of St. Bernard 1153.
214 Nicolas Breakspeare, an
Englishman, chosen pope
(Adrian IV)
1154.
216 Murder of Archbishop
Thomas Becket
1170.
217 The Third Crusade 1189.
218 Innocent III elected pope 1198.
222 Constantinople taken by
Crusaders
1203.
219 England put under an
interdict
1208.
223 War against the Albigenses 1208–1229.
227 Fourth Council of the
L a t e r a n — I n n o c e n t
1215.
sanctions the Dominican
and Franciscan Orders of
Mendicant Friars
230 First Crusade of St. Lewis 1240.
231 Second Crusade and death of
St. Lewis
1270.
232 Second Council of Lyons 1274.
233 Election of Pope Celestine V 1294.
235 Election of Pope Boniface
VIII
—.
235 Boniface celebrates the first
jubilee
1300.
239 Death of Boniface 1303.
240 The popes settle at Avignon 1310.
243 Council of Vienne—The
Templars dissolved
1312.
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J. C. Robertson Sketches of Church History, from AD 33 to the Reformation
253 Gregory XI moves the papacy
from Avignon to Rome
1377.
254 Beginning of the Great
Schism of the West
1378.
251 Death of John Wyclif 1384.
258 Council of Constance 1414–1418.
260 Pope John XXIII deposed 1415.
261 John Huss burnt by order of
the Council
—.
261 Election of Pope Martin V
and end of the Schism
1417.
264 Religious war of Bohemia
breaks out
1418.
265 Council of Basel opened 1431.
267 Council of Ferrara and
Florence
1438.
268 Constantinople taken by the
Turks
1453.
269 Invention of Printing 1455.
270 Pope Pius II vainly attempts
a crusade
1464.
274 Death of Savonarola 1498.
275 Death of Pope Alexander VI 1503.
276 Appearance of Martin Luther
as a reformer
1517.
1
13
J. C. Robertson Sketches of Church History, from AD 33 to the Reformation
PART I
CHAPTER I: THE AGE OF THE APOSTLES (AD 33–100)
The beginning of the Christian Church is reckoned from the great day on which the Holy Ghost
came down, according as our Lord had promised to His Apostles. At that time, “Jews, devout men,
out of every nation under heaven,” were gathered together at Jerusalem, to keep the Feast of
Pentecost (or Feast of Weeks), which was one of the three holy seasons at which God required His
people to appear before Him in the place which He had chosen (Deuteronomy xvi. 16). Many of
these devout men there converted by what they then saw and heard, to believe the Gospel; and,
when they returned to their own countries, they carried back with them the news of the wonderful
things which had taken place at Jerusalem. After this, the Apostles went forth “into all the world,”
as their Master had ordered them, to “preach the Gospel to every creature” (St Mark xvi. 15). The
Book of Acts tells us something of what they did, and we may learn something more about it from
the Epistles. And, although this be but a small part of the whole, it will give us a notion of the rest,
2
if we consider that, while St. Paul was preaching in Asia Minor, Greece, and at Rome, the other
Apostles were busily doing the same work in other countries.
We must remember, too, the constant coming and going which in those days took place
throughout the world, how Jews from all quarters went up to keep the Passover and other feasts at
Jerusalem; how the great Roman empire stretched from our own island of Britain as far as Persia
and Ethiopia, and people from all parts of it were continually going to Rome and returning. We
must consider how merchants travelled from country to country on account of their trade; how
soldiers were sent into all quarters of the empire and were moved about from one country to another.
And from these things we may get some understanding of the way in which the knowledge of the
Gospel would be spread, when once it had taken root in the great cities of Jerusalem and Rome.
Thus it came to pass, that, by the end of the first hundred years after our Saviour’s birth something
was known of the Christian faith throughout all the Roman empire, and even in countries beyond
it; and if in many cases, only a very little was known, still even that was a gain, and served as a
preparation for more.
The last chapter of the Acts leaves St. Paul at Rome, waiting for his trial on account of the
things which the Jews had laid to his charge. We find from the Epistles that he afterwards got his
liberty, and returned into the East. There is reason to suppose that he also visited Spain, as he had
spoken of doing in his Epistle to the Romans (ch. xv. 28); and it has been thought by some that he
even preached in Britain; but this does not seem likely. He was at last imprisoned again at Rome,
where the wicked Emperor Nero persecuted the Christians very cruelly; and it is believed that both
St. Peter and St. Paul were put to death there in the year of our Lord 68. The bishops of Rome
afterwards set up claims to great power and honour, because they said that St. Peter was the first
bishop of their church, and that they were his successors. But although we may reasonably believe
3
that the Apostle was martyred at Rome, there does not appear to be any good ground for thinking
that he had been settled there as bishop of the city.
All the Apostles, except St. John, are supposed to have been martyred (or put to death for the
sake of the Gospel). St. James the Less, who was bishop of Jerusalem, was killed by the Jews in
14
J. C. Robertson Sketches of Church History, from AD 33 to the Reformation
an uproar, about the year 62. Soon after this, the Romans sent their armies into Judea, and, after a
bloody war, they took the city of Jerusalem, and destroyed the Temple.
Thirty years after Herod’s time another cruel emperor, Domitian, raised a fresh persecution
against the Christians (AD 95). Among those who suffered were some of his own near relations;
for the Gospel had now made its way among the great people of the earth, as well as among the
poor, who were the first to listen to it. There is a story that the emperor was told that some persons
of the family of David were living in the Holy Land, and that he sent for them, because he was
afraid lest the Jews should set them up as princes, and should rebel against his government. They
were two grandchildren of St. Jude, who was one of our Lord’s kinsmen after the flesh, and therefore
belonged to the house of David and the old kings of Judah. But these two were plain countrymen,
who lived quietly and contentedly on their little farm, and were not likely to lead a rebellion, or to
claim earthly kingdoms. And when they were carried before the emperor, they showed him their
hands, which were rough and horny from working in the fields; and in answer to his questions about
the kingdom of Christ, they said that it was not of this world, but spiritual and heavenly, and that
it would appear at the end of the world, when the Saviour would come again to judge both the quick
and the dead. So the emperor saw that there was nothing to fear from them, and he let them go.
It was during Domitian’s persecution that St. John was banished to the island of Patmos, where
4
he saw the visions which are described in his “Revelation.” All the other Apostles had been long
dead, and St. John had lived many years at Ephesus, where he governed the churches of the country
around. After his return from Patmos he went about to all these churches, that he might repair the
hurt which they had suffered in the persecution. In one of the towns which he visited, he noticed a
young man of very pleasing looks, and called him forward, and desired the bishop of the place to
take care of him. The bishop did so, and, after having properly trained the youth, he baptised and
confirmed him. But when this had been done, the bishop thought that he need not watch over him
so carefully as before, and the young man fell into vicious company, and went on from bad to
worse, until at length he became the head of a band of robbers, who kept the whole country in
terror. When the Apostle next visited the town, he asked after the charge which he had put into the
bishop’s hands. The bishop, with shame and grief, answered that the young man was dead, and, on
being further questioned he explained that he meant dead in sins, and told all the story. St John,
after having blamed him because he had not taken more care, asked where the robbers were to be
found, and set off on horseback for their haunt, where he was seized by some of the band, and was
carried before the captain. The young man, on seeing him, knew him at once, and could not bear
his look, but ran away to hide himself. But the Apostle called him back, told him that there was yet
hope for him through Christ, and spoke in such a moving way that the robber agreed to return to
the town. There he was once more received into the Church as a penitent; and he spent the rest of
his days in repentance for his sins, and in thankfulness for the mercy which had been shown to him.
St. John, in his old age, was much troubled by false teachers, who had begun to corrupt the
Gospel. These persons are called “heretics”, and their doctrines are called “heresy” from a Greek
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word which means “to choose”, because they chose to follow their own fancies, instead of receiving
the Gospel as the Apostles and the Church taught it. Simon the sorcerer, who is mentioned in the
eighth chapter of the Acts, is counted as the first heretic, and even in the time of the Apostles a
number of others arose, such as Hymenaeus, Philetus, and Alexander, who are mentioned by St.
Paul (1 Tim. i. 19f; 2 Tim. ii. 17f). These earliest heretics were mostly of the kind called Gnostics,—
a word which means that they pretended to be more knowing than ordinary Christians, and perhaps
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St. Paul may have meant them especially when he warned Timothy against “science” (or knowledge)
“falsely so called” (1 Tim. vi. 20). Their doctrines were a strange mixture of Jewish and heathen
notions with Christianity; and it is curious that some of the very strangest of their opinions have
been brought up again from time to time by people who fancied that they had found out something
new, while they had only fallen into old errors, which had been condemned by the Church hundreds
of years before.
St. John lived to about the age of a hundred. He was at last so weak that he could not walk into
the church; so he was carried in, and used to say continually to his people, “Little children, love
one another.” Some of them, after a time, began to be tired of hearing this, and asked him why he
repeated the words so often, and said nothing else to them. The Apostle answered, “Because it is
the Lord’s commandment, and if this be done it is enough.”
CHAPTER II: ST. IGNATIUS (AD 116)
When our Lord ascended into Heaven, He left the government of His Church to the Apostles.
We are told that during the forty days between His rising from the grave and His ascension, He
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gave commandments unto the Apostles, and spoke of the things belonging to the kingdom of God
(Acts i. 2f). Thus they knew what they were to do when their Master should be no longer with them;
and one of the first things which they did, even without waiting until His promise of sending the
Holy Ghost should be fulfilled, was to choose St. Matthias into the place which had been left empty
by the fall of the traitor Judas (Acts i. 15–26).
After this we find that they appointed other persons to help them in their work. First, they
appointed the deacons to take care of the poor and to assist in other services. Then they appointed
presbyters (or elders), to undertake the charge of congregations. Afterwards, we find St. Paul sending
Timothy to Ephesus, and Titus into the island of Crete, with power to “ordain elders in every city”
(Tit. i. 5), and to govern all the churches within a large country. Thus, then, three kinds (or orders)
of ministers of the Church are mentioned in the Acts and Epistles. The deacons are lowest, the
presbyters, or elders, are next; and, above these, there is a higher order, made of the Apostles
themselves, with such persons as Timothy and Titus, who had to look after a great number of
presbyters and deacons, and were also the chief spiritual pastors (or shepherds) of the people who
were under the care of these presbyters and deacons. In the New Testament, the name of “bishops,”
(which means “overseers”) is sometimes given to the Apostles and other clergy of the highest order,
and sometimes to the presbyters, but after a time it was given only to the highest order, and when
the Apostles were dead, the bishops had the chief government of the Church. It has since been
found convenient that some bishops should be placed above others, and should be called by higher
titles, such as archbishops and patriarchs, but these all belong to the same order of bishops; just as
in a parish, although the rector and the curate have different titles, and one of them is above the
other, they are both most commonly presbyters (or, as we now say, priests), and so they both belong
to the same “order” in the ministry.
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One of the most famous among the early bishops was St. Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, the place
where the disciples were first called Christians (Acts xi. 26). Antioch was the chief city of Syria,
and was so large that it had more than two hundred thousand inhabitants. St. Peter himself is said
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to have been its bishop for some years; and, although this is perhaps a mistake, it is worth
remembering, because we shall find by-and-by that much was said about the bishops of Antioch
being St. Peter’s successors, as well as the bishops of Rome.
Ignatius had known St. John, and was made bishop of Antioch about thirty years before the
Apostle’s death. He had governed his church for forty years or more, when the Emperor Trajan
came to Antioch. In the Roman history, Trajan is described as one of the best among the emperors;
but he did not treat the Christians well. He seems never to have thought that the Gospel could
possibly be true, and thus he did not take the trouble to inquire what the Christians really believed
or did. They were obliged in those days to hold their worship in secret, and mostly by night, or very
early in the morning, because it would not have been safe to meet openly; and hence, the heathens,
who did not know what was done at their meetings, were tempted to fancy all manner of shocking
things, such as that the Christians practised magic; that they worshipped the head of an ass; that
they offered children in sacrifice; and that they ate human flesh! It is not likely that the Emperor
Trajan believed such foolish tales as these; and, when he DID make some inquiry about the ways
of the Christians, he heard nothing but what was good of them. But still he might think that there
was some mischief behind; and he might fear lest the secret meetings of the Christians should have
something to do with plots against his government; and so, as I have said, he was no friend to them.
When Trajan came to Antioch, St. Ignatius was carried before him. The emperor asked what
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evil spirit possessed him, so that he not only broke the laws by refusing to serve the gods of Rome,
but persuaded others to do the same. Ignatius answered, that he was not possessed by any evil spirit;
that he was a servant of Christ; that by His help he defeated the malice of evil spirits; and that he
bore his God and Saviour within his heart. After some more questions and answers, the emperor
ordered that he should be carried in chains to Rome, and there should be devoured by wild beasts.
When Ignatius heard this terrible sentence, he was so far from being frightened, that he burst forth
into thankfulness and rejoicing, because he was allowed to suffer for his Saviour, and for the
deliverance of his people.
It was a long and toilsome journey, over land and sea, from Antioch to Rome, and an old man,
such as Ignatius, was ill able to bear it, especially as winter was coming on. He was to be chained,
too, and the soldiers who had the charge of him behaved very rudely and cruelly to him. And no
doubt the emperor thought that, by sending so venerable a bishop in this way to suffer so fearful
and so disgraceful a death (to which only the very lowest wretches were usually sentenced), he
should terrify other Christians into forsaking their faith. But instead of this, the courage and the
patience with which St Ignatius bore his sufferings gave the Christians fresh spirit to endure whatever
might come on them.
The news that the holy bishop of Antioch was to be carried to Rome soon spread, and at many
places on the way the bishops, clergy, and people flocked together, that they might see him, and
pray and talk with him, and receive his blessing. And when he could find time, he wrote letters to
various churches, exhorting them to stand fast in the faith, to be at peace among themselves, to
obey the bishops who were set over them, and to advance in all holy living. One of the letters was
written to the Church at Rome, and was sent on by some persons who were travelling by a shorter
way. St. Ignatius begs, in this letter, that the Romans will not try to save him from death. “I am the
wheat of God,” he says, “let me be ground by the teeth of beasts, that I may be found the pure bread
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of Christ. Rather do ye encourage the beasts, that they may become my tomb, and may leave nothing
of my body, so that, when dead, I may not be troublesome to any one.” He even said that, if the
lions should hang back, he would himself provoke them to attack him. It would not be right for
ordinary people to speak in this way, and the Church has always disapproved of those who threw
themselves in the way of persecution. But a holy man who had served God for so many years as
Ignatius, might well speak in a way which could not become ordinary Christians. When he was
called to die for his people and for the troth of Christ, he might even take it as a token of God’s
favour, and might long for his deliverance from the troubles and the trials of this world, as St. Paul
said of himself, that he “had a desire to depart, and to be with Christ” (Phil. i. 23).
He reached Rome just in time for some games which were to take place a little before Christmas;
for the Romans were cruel enough to amuse themselves with setting wild beasts to tear and devour
men, in vast places called amphitheatres, at their public games. When the Christians of Rome heard
that Ignatius was near the city, great numbers of them went out to meet him, and they said that they
would try to persuade the people in the amphitheatre to see that he might not be put to death. But
he entreated, as he had before done in his letter, that they would do nothing to hinder him from
glorifying God by his death; and he knelt down with them, and prayed that they might continue in
faith and love, and that the persecution might soon come to an end. As it was the last day of the
games, and they were nearly over, he was then hurried into the amphitheatre (called the Coliseum),
which was so large that tens of thousands of people might look on. And in this place (of which the
ruins are still to be seen), St Ignatius was torn to death by wild beasts, so that only a few of his
larger bones were left, which the Christians took up and conveyed to his own city of Antioch.
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CHAPTER III: ST. JUSTIN MARTYR (AD 166)
Although Trajan was no friend to the Gospel, and put St. Ignatius to death, he made a law which
must have been a great relief to the Christians. Until then they were liable to be sought out, and
any one might inform against them; but Trajan ordered that they should not be sought out, although,
if they were discovered, and refused to give up their faith, they were to be punished. The next
emperor, too, whose name was Hadrian (AD 117–138) did something to make their condition better;
but it was still one of great hardship and danger. Notwithstanding the new laws, any governor of
a country, who disliked the Christians, had the power to persecute and vex them cruelly. And the
common people among the heathens still believed the horrid stories of their killing children and
eating human flesh. If there was a famine or a plague,—if the river Tiber, which runs through Rome,
rose above its usual height and did mischief to the neighbouring buildings,— or if the emperor’s
armies were defeated in war, the blame of all was laid on the Christians. It was said that all these
things were judgments from the gods, who were angry because the Christians were allowed to live.
And then at the public games, such as those at which St. Ignatius was put to death, the people used
to cry out, “Throw the Christians to the lions! away with the godless wretches!” For, as the Christians
were obliged to hold their worship secretly, and had no images like those of the heathen gods, and
did not offer any sacrifices of beasts, as the heathens did, it was thought that they had no God at
all, since the heathens could not raise their minds to the thought of that God who is a spirit, and
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who is not to be worshipped under any bodily shape. It was, therefore, a great relief when the
Emperor Antoninus Pius (AD 138 to 161), who was a mild and gentle old man, ordered that
governors and magistrates should not give way to such outcries, and that the Christians should no
longer be punished for their religion only, unless they were found to have done wrong in some
other way.
There were now many learned men in the Church, and some of these began to write books in
defence of their faith. One of them, Athenagoras, had undertaken, while he was a heathen, to show
that the Gospel was all a deceit; but when he looked further into the matter, he found that it was
very different from what he had fancied; and then he was converted, and, instead of writing against
the Gospel, he wrote in favour of it.
Another of these learned men was Justin, who was born at Samaria, and was trained in all the
wisdom of the Greeks; for the Greeks, as they were left without such light as God had given to the
Jews, set themselves to seek out wisdom in all sorts of ways. And, as they had no certain truth from
heaven to guide them, they were divided into a number of different parties, such as the Epicureans,
and the Stoics, who disputed with St. Paul at Athens (Acts xvii. 18). These all called themselves
“philosophers,” (which means, “lovers of wisdom”); and each kind of them thought to be wiser
than all the rest. Justin, then, having a strong desire to know the truth, tried one kind of philosophy
after another, but could not find rest for his spirit in any of them.
One day, as he was walking thoughtfully on the sea-shore, he observed an old man of grave
and mild appearance, who was following him closely, and at length entered into talk with him. The
old man told Justin that it was of no use to search after wisdom in the books of the philosophers,
and went on to speak of God the maker of all things, of the prophecies which He had given to men
in the time of the Old Testament, and how they had been fulfilled in the life and death of the blessed
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Jesus. Thus Justin was brought to the knowledge of the Gospel; and the more he learnt of it, the
more was he convinced of its truth, as he came to know how pure and holy its doctrines and its
rules were, and as he saw the love which Christians bore towards each other, and the patience and
firmness with which they endured sufferings and death for their Master’s sake. And now, although
he still called himself a philosopher, and wore the long cloak which was the common dress of
philosophers, the wisdom which he taught was not heathen but Christian wisdom. He lived mostly
at Rome, where scholars flocked to him in great numbers. And he wrote books in defence of the
Gospel against heathens, Jews, and heretics, or false Christians.
The old Emperor Antoninus Pius, under whom the Christians had been allowed to live in peace
and safety, died in the year 161, and was succeeded by Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, whom he had
adopted as his son. Marcus Aurelius was not only one of the best emperors, but in many ways was
one of the best of the heathens. He had a great character for gentleness, kindness, and justice, and
he was fond of books, and liked to have philosophers and learned men about him. But, unhappily,
these people gave him a very bad notion of Christianity, and, as he knew no more of it than what
they told him, he took a strong dislike to it. And thus, although he was just and kind to his other
subjects, the Christians suffered more under his reign than they had ever done before. All the
misfortunes that took place, such as rebellions, defeats in war, plague, and scarcity, were laid to
the blame of the Christians; and the emperor himself seems to have thought that they were in fault,
as he made some new laws against them.
Now the success which Justin had as a teacher at Rome had long raised the envy and malice of
the heathen philosophers; and, when these new laws against the Christians came out, one Crescens,
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a philosopher of the kind called “Cynics”, or “doggish” (on account of their snarling, currish ways),
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contrived that Justin should be carried before a judge, on the charge of being a Christian. The judge
questioned him as to his belief, and as to the meetings of the Christians; to which Justin answered
that he believed in one God and in the Saviour Christ, the Son of God, but he refused to say anything
which could betray his brethren to the persecutors. The judge then threatened him with scourging
and death: but Justin replied that the sufferings of this world were nothing to the glory which Christ
had promised to His people in the world to come. Then he and the others who had been brought
up for trial with him were asked whether they would offer sacrifice to the gods of the heathen, and
as they refused to do this, and to forsake their faith, they were all beheaded (AD 166). And on
account of the death which he thus suffered for the Gospel, Justin has ever since been especially
styled “The Martyr.”
CHAPTER IV: ST. POLYCARP (AD 166)
About the same time with Justin the Martyr, St. Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, was put to death.
He was a very old man; for it was almost ninety years since he had been converted from heathenism.
He had known St. John, and is supposed to have been made bishop of Smyrna by that Apostle
himself, and he had been a friend of St. Ignatius, who, as we have seen, suffered martyrdom fifty
years before. From all these things, and from his wise and holy character, he was looked up to as
a father by all the churches, and his mild advice had sometimes put all end to differences of opinion
which but for him might have turned into lasting quarrels.
When the persecution reached Smyrna, in the reign of Marcus Aurelius, a number of Christians
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suffered with great constancy, and the heathen multitude, being provoked at their refusal to give
up their faith, cried out for the death of Polycarp. The aged bishop, although he was ready to die
for his Saviour, remembered that it was not right to throw himself in the way of danger; so he left
the city, and went first to one village in the neighbourhood and then to another. But he was discovered
in his hiding-place, and when he saw the soldiers who were come to seize him, he calmly said,
“God’s will be done!” He desired that some food should be given to them, and while they were
eating, he spent the time in prayer. He was then set on an ass, and led towards Smyrna; and, when
he was near the town, one of the heathen magistrates came by in his chariot, and took him up into
it. The magistrate tried to persuade Polycarp to sacrifice to the gods; but finding that he could make
nothing of him, he pushed him out of the chariot so roughly that the old man fell and broke his leg.
But Polycarp bore the pain without showing how much he was hurt, and the soldiers led him into
the amphitheatre, where great numbers of people were gathered together. When all these saw him,
they set up loud cries of rage and savage delight; but Polycarp thought, as he entered the place, that
he heard a voice saying to him, “Be strong and play the man!” and he did not heed all the shouting
of the crowd. The governor desired him to deny Christ, and said that, if he would, his life should
be spared. But the faithful bishop answered “Fourscore and six years have I served Christ, and He
hath never done me wrong; how then can I now blaspheme my King and Saviour?” The governor
again and again urged him, as if in a friendly way, to sacrifice; but Polycarp stedfastly refused. He
next threatened to let wild beasts loose on him, and as Polycarp still showed no fear, he said that
he would burn him alive. “You threaten me,” said the bishop, “with a fire which lasts but a short
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time; but you know not of that eternal fire which is prepared for the wicked.” A stake was then set
up, and a pile of wood was collected around it. Polycarp walked to the place with a calm and cheerful
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look, and, as the executioners were going to fasten him to the stake with iron cramps, he begged
them to spare themselves the trouble. “He who gives me the strength to bear the flames,” he said.
“will enable me to remain steady.” He was therefore only tied to the stake with cords, and as he
stood thus bound, he uttered a thanksgiving for being allowed to suffer after the pattern of his Lord
and Saviour. When his prayer was ended, the wood was set on fire, but we are told that the flames
swept round him, looking like the sail of a ship swollen by the wind, while he remained unhurt in
the midst of them. One of the executioners, seeing this, plunged a sword into the martyr’s breast,
and the blood rushed forth in such a stream that it put out the fire. But the persecutors, who were
resolved that the Christians should not have their bishop’s body, lighted the wood again, and burnt
the corpse, so that only a few of the bones remained; and these the Christians gathered out, and
gave them an honourable burial. It was on Easter eve that St. Polycarp suffered, in the year of our
Lord 166.
CHAPTER V: THE MARTYRS OF LYONS AND VIENNE (AD 177)
Many other martyrs suffered in various parts of the empire under the reign of Marcus Aurelius.
Among the most famous of these are the martyrs of Lyons and Vienne, in the south of France (or
Gaul, as it was then called), where a company of missionaries from Asia Minor had settled with a
bishop named Pothinus at their head. The persecution at Lyons and Vienne was begun by the mob
of those towns, who insulted the Christians in the streets, broke into their houses, and committed
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other such outrages against them. Then a great number of Christians were seized, and imprisoned
in horrid dungeons, where many died from want of food, or from the bad and unwholesome air.
The bishop, Pothinus, who was ninety years of age, and had long been very ill, was carried before
the governor, and was asked, “Who is the God of Christians?” Pothinus saw that the governor did
not put this question from any good feeling; so he answered, “If thou be worthy, thou shalt know.”
The bishop, old and feeble as he was, was then dragged about by soldiers, and such of the mob as
could reach him gave him blows and kicks, while others, who were further off, threw anything
which came to hand at him; and, after this cruel usage, he was put into prison, where he died within
two days.
The other prisoners were tortured for six days together in a variety of horrible ways. Their limbs
were stretched on the rack; they were cruelly scourged; some had hot plates of iron applied to them,
and some were made to sit in a red-hot iron chair. The firmness with which they bore these dreadful
trials gave courage to some of their brethren, who at first had agreed to sacrifice, so that these now
again declared themselves Christians, and joined the others in suffering. As all the tortures were
of no effect, the prisoners were at length put to death. Some were thrown to wild beasts; but those
who were citizens of Rome were beheaded: for it was not lawful to give a Roman citizen up to wild
beasts, just as we know from St. Paul’s case at Philippi that it was not lawful to scourge a citizen
(Acts xvi. 37).
Among the martyrs was a boy from Asia, only fifteen years old, who was taken every day to
see the tortures of the rest in the hope that he might be frightened into denying his Saviour; but he
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was not shaken by the terrible sights, and for his constancy he was cruelly put to death on the last
day. The greatest cruelties of all, however, were borne by a young woman named Blandina. She
was slave to a Christian lady; and, although the Christians regarded their slaves with a kindness
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very unlike the usual feeling of heathen masters towards them, this lady seems yet to have thought
that a slave was not likely to endure tortures so courageously as a free person; and she was the more
afraid because Blandina was not strong in body. But the poor slave’s faith was not to be overcome.
Day after day she bravely bore every cruelty that the persecutors could think of; and all that they
could wring out from her was, “I am a Christian, and nothing wrong is done among us!”
The heathen were not content with putting the martyrs to death with tortures, or allowing them
to die in prison. They cast their dead bodies to the dogs, and caused them to be watched day and
night, lest the other Christians should give them burial; and after this, they burnt the bones, and
threw the ashes of them into the river Rhone, by way of mocking at the notion of a resurrection.
For, as St. Paul had found at Athens (Acts xvii. 32), and elsewhere, there was no part of the Gospel
which the heathen in general thought so hard to believe as the doctrine that that which is “sown in
corruption” shall hereafter be “raised in incorruption;” that that which “is sown a natural body”
will one day be “raised a spiritual body” (1 Cor. xv. 42–44).
CHAPTER VI: TERTULLIAN; PERPETUA AND COMPANIONS (AD 181–206)
The Emperor Marcus Aurelius died in 181, and the Church was little troubled by persecution
for the following twenty years.
About this time a false teacher named Montanus made much noise in the world. He was born
in Phrygia, and seems to have been crazed in his mind. He used to fall into fits, and while in them,
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he uttered ravings which were taken for prophecies, or messages from heaven: and some women
who followed him also pretended to be prophetesses. These people taught a very strict way of
living, and thus many persons who wished to lead holy lives were deceived into running after them.
One of these was Tertullian, of Carthage, in Africa, a very clever and learned man, who had been
converted from heathenism, and had written some books in defence of the Gospel, but he was of
a proud and impatient temper, and did not rightly consider how our Lord Himself had said that
there would always be a mixture of evil with the good in His Church on earth (St. Matt. xiii. 38,
48). And hence, when Montanus pretended to set up a new church, in which there should be none
but good and holy people, Tertullian fell into the snare, and left the true Church to join the Montanists
(as the followers of Montanus were called). From that time he wrote very bitterly against the Church;
but he still continued to defend the Gospel in his books against Jews and heathens, and all kinds
of false teachers, except Montanus. And when he was dead, his good deeds were remembered more
than his fall, so that, with all his faults, his name has always been held in respect.
After more than twenty years of peace, there were cruel persecutions in some places, under the
reign of Severus. The most famous of the martyrs who then suffered were Perpetua and her
companions, who belonged to the same country with Tertullian, and perhaps to his own city,
Carthage. Perpetua was a young married lady, and had a little baby only a few weeks old. Her father
was a heathen, but she herself had been converted, and was a “catechumen”— which was the name
given to converts who had not yet been baptized, but were in a course of “catechising”, or training
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for baptism. When Perpetua had been put into prison, her father went to see her, in the hope that
he might persuade her to give up her faith. “Father,” she said, “you see this vessel standing here;
can you call it by any other than its right name?” He answered, “No.” “Neither,” said Perpetua,
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“can I call myself anything else than what I am—a Christian.” On hearing this, her father flew at
her in such anger that it seemed as if he would tear out her eyes; but she stood so quietly that he
could not bring himself to hurt her, and he went away and did not come again for some time.
In the meanwhile Perpetua and some of her companions were baptized; and at her baptism she
prayed for grace to bear whatever sufferings might be in store for her. The prison in which she and
the others were shut up was a horrible dungeon, where Perpetua suffered much from the darkness,
the crowded state of the place, the heat and closeness of the air, and the rude behaviour of the
guards. But most of all she was distressed about her poor little child, who was separated from her,
and was pining away. Some kind Christians, however, gave money to the keepers of the prison,
and got leave for Perpetua and her friends to spend some hours of the day in a lighter part of the
building, where her child was brought to see her. And after a while she took him to be always with
her, and then she felt as cheerful as if she had been in a palace.
The martyrs were comforted by dreams, which served to give them courage and strength to
bear their sufferings, by showing them visions of blessedness which was to follow. When the day
was fixed for their trial, Perpetua’s father went again to see her. He begged her to take pity on his
old age, to remember all his kindness to her, and how he had loved her best of all his children. He
implored her to think of her mother and her brothers, and of the disgrace which would fall on all
the family if she were to be put to death as an evil-doer. The poor old man shed a flood of tears;
he humbled himself before her, kissing her hands, throwing himself at her feet, and calling her
Lady instead of Daughter. But, although Perpetua was grieved to the heart, she could only say,
“God’s pleasure will be done on us. We are not in our own power, but in His.”
One day, as the prisoners were at dinner, they were suddenly hurried off to their trial. The
market-place, where the judge was sitting, was crowded with people, and when Perpetua was
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brought forward, her father crept as close to her as he could, holding out her child, and said, “Take
pity on your infant.” The judge himself entreated her to pity the little one and the old man, and to
sacrifice but, painful as the trial was, she steadily declared that she was a Christian, and that she
could not worship false gods. At these words, her father burst out into such loud cries that the judge
ordered him to be put down from the place where he was standing and to be beaten with rods.
Perhaps the judge did not mean so much to punish the old man for being noisy as to try whether
the sight of his suffering might not move his daughter; but, although Perpetua felt every blow as
if it had been laid upon herself, she knew that she must not give way. She was condemned, with
her companions, to be exposed to wild beasts; and, after she had been taken back to prison, her
father visited her once more. He seemed as if beside himself with grief; he tore his white beard, he
cursed his old age, and spoke in a way that might have moved a heart of stone. But still Perpetua
could only be sorry for him; she could not give up her Saviour.
The prisoners were kept for some time after their condemnation, that they might be put to death
at some great games which were to be held on the birthday of one of the emperor’s sons; and during
this confinement their behaviour had a great effect on many who saw it. The gaoler himself was
converted by it, and so were others who had gone to gaze at them. At length the appointed day
came, and the martyrs were led into the amphitheatre. The men were torn by leopards and bears;
Perpetua and a young woman named Felicitas, who had been a slave, were put into nets and thrown
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before a furious cow, who tossed them and gored them cruelly; and when this was over, Perpetua
seemed as if she had not felt it, but were awaking from a trance, and she asked when the cow was
to come. She then helped Felicitas to rise from the ground, and spoke words of comfort and
encouragement to others. When the people in the amphitheatre had seen as much as they wished
21
of the wild beasts, they called out that the prisoners should be killed. Perpetua and the rest then
took leave of each other, and walked with cheerful looks and firm steps into the middle of the
amphitheatre, where men with swords fell on them and dispatched them. The executioner who was
to kill Perpetua was a youth, and was so nervous that he stabbed her in a place where the hurt was
not deadly; but she herself took hold of his sword, and showed him where to give her the
death-wound.
CHAPTER VII: ORIGEN (AD 185–254)
The same persecution in which Perpetua and her companions suffered at Carthage raged also
at Alexandria in Egypt, where a learned man named Leonides was one of the martyrs (AD 202).
Leonides had a son named Origen, whom he had brought up very carefully, and had taught to get
some part of the Bible by heart every day. And Origen was very eager to learn, and was so good
and so clever that his father was afraid to show how fond and how proud he was of him, lest the
boy should become forward and conceited. So when Origen asked questions of a kind which few
boys would have thought of asking, his father used to check him, but when he was asleep Leonides
would steal to his bedside and kiss him, thanking God for having given him such a child, and
praying that Origen might always be kept in the right way.
When the persecution began, Origen, who was then about seventeen years old, wished that he
might be allowed to die for his faith; but his mother hid his clothes, and so obliged him to stay at
home; and all that he could do was to write to his father in prison, and to beg that he would not fear
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lest the widow and orphans should be left destitute, but would be stedfast in his faith, and would
trust in God to provide for their relief.
The persecutors were not content with killing Leonides, but seized on all his property, so that
the widow was left in great distress, with seven children, of whom Origen was the eldest. A Christian
lady kindly took Origen into her house; and after a short time, young as he was, he was made master
of the “Catechetical School,”, a sort of college, where the young Christians of Alexandria were
instructed in religion and learning. The persecution had slackened for a while, but it began again,
and some of Origen’s pupils were martyred. He went with them to their trial, and stood by them in
their sufferings; but although he was ill-used by the mob of Alexandria, he was himself allowed to
go free.
Origen had read in the Gospel, “Freely ye have received, freely give” (St. Matt. x. 8), and he
thought that therefore he ought to teach for nothing. In order, therefore, that he might be able to do
this, he sold a quantity of books which he had written out, and lived for a long time on the price of
them, allowing himself only about fivepence a day. His food was of the poorest kind; he had but
one coat, through which he felt the cold of winter severely, he sat up the greater part of the night,
and then lay down on the bare floor. When he grew older, he came to understand that he had been
mistaken in some of his notions as to these things, and to regret that, by treating himself so hardly,
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he had hurt his health beyond repair. But still, mistaken as he was, we must honour him for going
through so bravely with what he took to be his duty.
He soon grew so famous as a teacher, that even Jews, heathens, and heretics went to hear him;
and many of them were so led on by him that they were converted to the Gospel. He travelled a
great deal; some of his journeys were taken because he had been invited into foreign countries that
he might teach the Gospel to people who were desirous of instruction in it, or that he might settle
disputes about religion. And he was invited to go on a visit to the mother of the Emperor Alexander
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Severus, who was himself friendly to Christianity, although not a Christian. Origen, too, wrote a
great number of books in explanation of the Bible, and on other religious subjects; and he worked
for no less than eight-and-twenty years at a great book called the “Hexapla”, which was meant to
show how the Old Testament ought to be read in Hebrew and in Greek.
But, although he was a very good, as well as a very learned man, Origen fell into some strange
opinions, from wishing to clear away some of those difficulties which, as St Paul says, made the
Gospel seem “foolishness” to the heathen philosophers (1 Cor. i. 23). Besides this, Demetrius, the
bishop of Alexandria, although he had been his friend, had some reasons for not wishing to ordain
him to be one of the clergy; and when Origen had been ordained a presbyter (or priest) in the Holy
Land, where he was on a visit, Demetrius was very angry. He said that no man ought to be ordained
in any church but that of his own home; and he brought up stories about some rash things which
Origen had done in his youth, and questions about the strange doctrines which he held. Origen,
finding that he could not hope for peace at Alexandria, went back to his friend the bishop of Caesarea,
by whom he had been ordained, and he spent many years at Caesarea, where he was more sought
after as a teacher than ever. At one time he was driven into Cappadocia, by the persecution of a
savage emperor named Maximin, who had murdered the gentle Alexander Severus; but he returned
to Caesarea, and lived there until another persecution began under the Emperor Decius.
This was by far the worst persecution that had yet been known. It was the first which was carried
on throughout the whole empire, and no regard was now paid to the old laws which Trajan and
other emperors had made for the protection of the Christians. They were sought out, and were made
to appear in the market-place of every town, where they were required by the magistrates to sacrifice,
and if they refused, were sentenced to severe punishment. The emperor wished most to get at the
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bishops and clergy; for he thought that, if the teachers were put out of the way, the people would
soon give up the Gospel. Although many martyrs were put to death at this time, the persecutors did
not so much wish to kill the Christians, as to make them disown their religion; and, in the hope of
this, many of them were starved, and tortured, and sent into banishment in strange countries, among
wild people who had never before heard of Christ. But here the emperor’s plans were notably
disappointed, for the banished bishops and clergy had thus an opportunity of making the Gospel
known to those poor wild tribes, whom it might not have reached for a long time if the Church had
been left in quiet.
We shall hear more about the persecution in the next chapter. Here I shall only say that Origen
was imprisoned and cruelly tortured. He was by this time nearly seventy years old, and was weak
in body from the labours which he had gone through in study, and from having hurt his health by
hard and scanty living in his youth, so that he was ill able to bear the pains of the torture, and,
although he did not die under it, he died of its effects soon after (AD 254).
Decius himself was killed in battle (AD 251), and his persecution came to an end. And when
it was over, the faithful understood that it had been of great use, not only by helping to spread the
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Gospel, in the way which has been mentioned, but in purifying the Church, and in rousing Christians
from the carelessness into which too many of them had fallen during the long time of ease and quiet
which they had before enjoyed. For the trials which God sends on His people in this world are like
the chastisements of a loving Father, and, if we accept them rightly, they will all be found to turn
out to our good.
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CHAPTER VIII: ST. CYPRIAN
PART I (AD 200–253)
About the same time with Origen lived St Cyprian, bishop of Carthage. He was born about the
year 200, and had been long famous as a professor of heathen learning, when he was converted at
the age of forty-five. He then gave up his calling as a teacher, and, like the first Christians at
Jerusalem (Acts iv. 34f), he sold a fine house and gardens, which he had near the town, and gave
the price, with a large part of his other money, to the poor. He became one of the clergy of Carthage,
and when the bishop died, about three years after, Cyprian was so much loved and respected that
he was chosen in his place (AD 248).
Cyprian tried with all his power to do the duties of a good bishop, and to get rid of many wrong
things which had grown upon his Church during the long peace which it had enjoyed. But about
two years after he was made bishop the persecution under Decius broke out, when, as was said in
the last chapter, the persecutors tried especially to strike at the bishops and clergy, and to force
them to deny their faith. Now Cyprian would have been ready and glad to die, if it would have
served the good of his people; but he remembered how our Lord had said, “When they persecute
you in this city, flee ye into another” (St. Matt. x. 23), and how He Himself withdrew from the rage
of His enemies, because His “hour was not yet come” (St. John viii. 20, 59; xi. 54). And it seemed
to the good bishop, that for the present it would be best to go out of the way of his persecutors. But
he kept a constant watch over all that was done in his church, and he often wrote to his clergy and
people from the place where he was hidden.
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But in the meanwhile, things went on badly at Carthage. Many had called themselves Christians
in the late quiet times who would not have done so if there had been any danger about it. And now,
when the danger came, numbers of them ran into the market-place at Carthage, and seemed quite
eager to offer sacrifice to the gods of the heathen. Others, who did not sacrifice, bribed some officers
of the Government to give them tickets, certifying that they had sacrificed; and yet they contrived
to persuade themselves that they had done nothing wrong by their cowardice and deceit! There
were, too, some mischievous men among the clergy, who had not wished Cyprian to be bishop,
and had borne him a grudge ever since he was chosen. And now these clergymen set on the people
who had lapsed (or fallen) in the persecution, to demand that they should be taken back into the
Church, and to say that some martyrs had given them letters which entitled them to be admitted at
once.
In those days it was usual, when any Christian was known to have been guilty of a heavy sin,
that (as is said in our Commination Service), he should be “put to open penance” by the Church;
that is, that he should be required to show his repentance publicly. Persons who were in this state
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were not allowed to receive the holy sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, as all other Christians then
did very often. The worst sinners were obliged to stand outside the church door, where they begged
those who were going in to pray that their sins might be forgiven, and those of the penitents who
were let into the church had places in it separate from other Christians. Sometimes penance lasted
for years; and always until the penitents had done enough to prove that they were truly grieved for
their sins, so that the clergy might hope that they were received to God’s mercy for their Redeemer’s
sake. But as it was counted a great and glorious thing to die for the truth of Christ, and martyrs
were highly honoured in the Church, penitents had been in the habit of going to them while they
were in prison awaiting death, and of entreating the martyrs to plead with the Church for the
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shortening of the appointed penance. And it had been usual, out of regard for the holy martyrs, to
forgive those to whom they had given letters desiring that the penitents might be gently treated.
But now these people at Carthage, instead of showing themselves humble, as true penitents would
have been, came forward in an insolent manner, as if they had a right to claim that they might be
restored to the Church; and the martyrs’ letters (or rather what they called martyrs’ letters) were
used in a way very different from anything that had ever been allowed. Cyprian had a great deal
of trouble with them; but he dealt wisely in the matter, and at length had the comfort of settling it.
But, as people are always ready to find fault in one way or another, some blamed him for being too
strict with the lapsed, and others for being too easy; and each of these parties went so far as to set
up a bishop of its own against him. After a time, however, he got the better of these enemies,
although the straiter sect (who were called Novatianists, after Novatian, a presbyter of Rome) lasted
for three hundred years or more.
PART II (AD 253–257)
Shortly after the end of the persecution, a terrible plague passed through the empire, and carried
off vast numbers of people. Many of the heathen thought that the plague was sent by their gods to
punish them for allowing the Christians to live; and the mobs of towns broke out against the
Christians, killing some of them, and hurting them in other ways.
But instead of returning evil for evil, the Christians showed what a spirit of love they had learnt
from their Lord and Master; and there was no place where this was more remarkably shown than
at Carthage. The heathen there were so terrified by the plague that they seemed to have lost all
natural feeling, and almost to be out of their senses. When their friends fell sick, they left them to
die without any care; when they were dead, they cast out their bodies into the street, and the corpses
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which lay about unburied were not only shocking to look at, but made the air unwholesome, so that
there was much more danger of the plague than before. But while the heathen were behaving in
this way, and each of them thought only of himself, Cyprian called the Christians of Carthage
together, and told them that they were bound to do very differently. “It would be no wonder,” he
said, “if we were to attend to our own friends; but Christ our Lord charges us to do good to heathens
and publicans also, and to love our enemies. He prayed for them that persecuted Him, and if we
are His disciples, we ought to do so too.” And then the good bishop went on to tell his people what
part each of them should take in the charitable work. Those who had money were to give it, and
were to do such acts of kindness as they could besides. The poor, who had no silver or gold to
spare, were to give their labour in a spirit of love. So all classes set to their tasks gladly, and they
nursed the sick and buried the dead, without asking whether they were Christian or heathens.
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When the heathens saw these acts of love, many of them were brought to wonder what it could
be that made the Christians do them, and how they came to be so kind to poor and old people, to
widows, and orphans, and slaves; and how it was that they were always ready to raise money for
buying the freedom of captives, or for helping their brethren who were in any kind of trouble. And
from wondering and asking what it was that led Christians to do such things, which they themselves
would never have thought of doing, many of the heathen were brought to see that the Gospel was
the true religion, and they forsook their idols to follow Christ.
After this, Cyprian had a disagreement with Stephen bishop of Rome. Rome was the greatest
city in the whole world, and the capital of the empire. There were many Christians there even in
the time of the Apostles, and, as years went on, the Church of Rome grew more and more, so that
it was the greatest, and richest, and most important church of all. Now the bishops who were at the
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head of this great church were naturally reckoned the foremost of all bishops, and had more power
than any other, so that if a proud man got the bishopric of Rome, it was too likely that he might try
to set himself up above his brethren, and to lay down the law to them. Stephen was, unhappily, a
man of this kind, and he gave way to the temptation, and tried to lord it over other bishops and their
churches. But Cyprian held out against him, and made him understand that the bishop of Rome had
no right to give laws to other bishops, or to meddle with the churches of other countries. He showed
that, although St. Peter (from whom Stephen pretended that the bishops of Rome had received
power over others) was the first of the Apostles, he was not of a higher class or order than the rest;
and, therefore, that, although the Roman bishops stood first, the other bishops were their equals,
and had received an equal share in the Christian ministry. So Stephen was not able to get the power
which he wished for over other churches, and, after his death, Carthage and Rome were at peace
again.
PART III (AD 257–258)
About six years after the death of the Emperor Decius, a fresh persecution arose under another
emperor, named Valerian (AD 257). He began by ordering that the Christians should not be allowed
to meet for worship, and that the bishops and clergy should be separated from their flocks. Cyprian
was carried before the governor of Africa, and, on being questioned by him, he said. “I am a Christian
and a bishop. I know no other gods but the one true God, who made heaven and earth, the sea, and
all that is in them. It is this God that we Christians serve; to Him we pray day and night, for ourselves
and all mankind, and for the welfare of the emperors themselves.” The governor asked him about
his clergy. “Our laws,” said Cyprian, forbid them to throw themselves in your way, and I may not
inform against them; but if they be sought after, they will be found, each at his post.” The governor
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said that no Christians must meet for worship under pain of death; and he sentenced Cyprian to be
banished to a place called Curubis, about forty miles from Carthage. It was a pleasant abode, and
Cyprian lived there a year, during which time he was often visited by his friends, and wrote many
letters of advice and comfort to his brethren. And, as many of these were worse treated than himself,
by being carried off into savage places, or set to work underground in mines, he did all that he
could to relieve their distress, by sending them money and other presents.
At the end of the year, the bishop was carried back to Carthage, where a new governor had just
arrived. The emperor had found that his first law against the Christians was of little use; so he now
made a second law, which was much more severe. It ordered that bishops and clergy should be put
to death; that such Christians as were persons of worldly rank should lose all that they had, and be
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banished or killed; but it said nothing about the poorer Christians, who do not seem to have been
in any danger. Cyprian thought that his time was now come; and when his friends entreated him
to save himself by flight, he refused. He was carried off to the governor’s country house, about six
miles from Carthage, where he was treated with much respect, and was allowed to have some
friends with him at supper. Great numbers of his people, on hearing that he was seized, went from
Carthage to the place where he was, and watched all night outside the house in fear lest their bishop
should be put to death, or carried off into banishment without their knowledge. Next morning
Cyprian was led to the place of judgment, which was a little way from the governor’s palace. He
was heated with the walk, under a burning sun; and, as he was waiting for the governor’s arrival,
a soldier of the guard, who had once been a Christian, kindly offered him some change of clothes.
“Why,” said the bishop, “should we trouble ourselves to remedy evils which will probably come
to an end to-day?”
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The governor took his seat, and required Cyprian to sacrifice to the gods. He refused; and the
governor then desired him to consider his safety. “In so righteous a cause,” answered the bishop,
“there is no need of consideration;” and, on hearing the sentence, which condemned him to be
beheaded, he exclaimed, “Praise be to God!” A cry arose from the Christians, “Let us go and be
beheaded with him!” He was then led by soldiers to the place of execution. Many of his people
climbed up into the trees which surrounded it, that they might see the last of their good bishop.
After having prayed, he took off his upper clothing; he gave some money to the executioner, and
as it was necessary that he should be blindfolded before suffering, he tied the bandage over his own
eyes. Two of his friends then bound his hands, and the Christians placed cloths and handkerchiefs
around him, that they night catch some of his blood. And thus St. Cyprian was martyred, in the
year 258.
Valerian’s attempts against the Gospel were all in vain. The Church had been purified and
strengthened by the persecution under Decius, so that there were now very few who fell away for
fear of death. The faith was spread by the banished bishops, in the same way as it had been in the
last persecution (see page 25); and, as has ever been found, “the blood of the martyrs was the seed
of the Church.”
CHAPTER IX: FROM GALLIENUS
TO THE END OF THE LAST PERSECUTION (AD 261–313)
Valerian, who had treated the Christians so cruelly, came to a miserable end. He led his army
into Persia, where he was defeated and taken prisoner. He was kept for some time in captivity; and
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we are told that he used to be led forth, loaded with chains, but with the purple robes of an emperor
thrown over him, that the Persians might mock at his misfortunes. And when he had died from the
effects of shame and grief, it is said that his skin was stuffed with straw, and was kept in a temple,
as a remembrance of the triumph which the Persians had gained over the Romans, whose pride had
never been so humbled before.
When Valerian was taken prisoner, his son Gallienus became emperor (AD 261). Gallienus
sent forth a law by which the Christians, for the first time, got the liberty of serving God without
the risk of being persecuted. We might think him a good emperor for making such a law; but he
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really does not deserve much credit for it, since he seems to have made it merely because he did
not care much either for his own religion, or for any other.
And now there is hardly anything to be said of the next forty years, except that the Christians
enjoyed peace and prosperity. Instead of being obliged to hold their services in the upper rooms of
houses or in burial-places under ground, and in the dead of night, they built splendid churches,
which they furnished with gold and silver plate, and with other costly ornaments. Christians were
appointed to high offices, such as the government of countries, and many of them held places in
the emperor’s palace. And, now that there was no danger or loss to be risked by being Christians,
multitudes of people joined the Church who would have kept at a distance from it if there had been
anything to fear. But, unhappily, the Christians did not make a good use of all their prosperity.
Many of them grew worldly and careless, and had little of the Christian about them except the
name; and they quarrelled and disputed among themselves, as if they were no better than mere
heathens. But it pleased God to punish them severely for their faults, for at length there came such
a persecution as had never before been known.
At this time there were no fewer than four emperors at once; for Diocletian, who became emperor
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in the year 284, afterwards took in Maximian, Galerius, and Constantius, to share his power, and
to help him in the labour of government. Galerius and Constantius, however, were not quite so
high, and had not such full authority, as the other two. Galerius married Diocletian’s daughter, and
it was supposed that both this lady and the empress, her mother, were Christians. The priests and
others, whose interest it was to keep up the old heathenism, began to be afraid lest the empresses
should make Christians of their husbands; and they sought how this might be prevented.
Now the heathens had some ways by which they used to try to find out the will of their gods.
Sometimes they offered sacrifices of beasts, and, when the beasts were killed, they cut them open,
and judged from the appearance of the inside, whether the gods were well pleased or angry. And
at certain places there were what they called oracles, where people who wished to know the will
of the gods went through some ceremonies, and expected a voice to come from this or that god in
answer to them. Sure enough, the voice very often did come, although it was not really from any
god, but was managed by the juggling of the priests. And the answers which these voices gave were
often contrived very cunningly, that they might have more than one meaning, so that, however
things might turn out, the oracle was sure to come true. And now the priests set to frighten Diocletian
with tricks of this kind. When he sacrificed, the insides of the victims (as the beasts offered in
sacrifice were called) were said to look in such a way as to show that the gods were angry. When
he consulted the oracles, answers were given declaring that, so long as Christians were allowed to
live on the earth, the gods would be displeased. And thus Diocletian, although at first he had been
inclined to let them alone, became terrified, and was ready to persecute.
The first order against the Christians was a proclamation requiring that all soldiers, and all
persons who held any office under the emperor, should sacrifice to the heathen gods (AD 298).
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And five years after this, Galerius, who was a cruel man, and very bitter against the Christians
(although his wife was supposed to be one), persuaded Diocletian to begin a persecution in earnest.
Diocletian did not usually live at Rome, like the earlier emperors, but at Nicomedia, a town in
Asia Minor, on the shore of the Propontis (now called the Sea of Marmora). And there the persecution
began, by his sending forth an order that all who would not serve the gods of Rome should lose
their offices; that their property should be seized, and, if they were persons of rank, they should
lose their rank. Christians were no longer allowed to meet for worship; their churches were to be
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destroyed, and their holy books were to be sought out and burnt (Feb. 24, 303). As soon as this
proclamation was set forth, a Christian tore it down, and broke into loud reproaches against the
emperors. Such violent acts and words were not becoming in a follower of Him, “who, when He
was reviled, reviled not again, and when He suffered, threatened not” (1 Peter ii. 23). But the man
who had forgotten himself so far, showed the strength of his principles in the patience with which
he bore the punishment of what he had done, for he was roasted alive at a slow fire, and did not
even utter a groan.
This was in February, 303; and before the end of that year, Diocletian put forth three more
proclamations against the Christians. One of them ordered that the Christian teachers should be
imprisoned; and very soon the prisons were filled with bishops and clergy, while the evil-doers
who were usually confined in them were turned loose. The next proclamation ordered that the
prisoners should either sacrifice or be tortured; and the fourth directed that not only the bishops
and clergy, but all Christians, should be required to sacrifice, on pain of torture.
These cruel laws were put in execution. Churches were pulled down, beginning with the great
church of Nicomedia, which was built on a height, and overlooked the emperor’s palace. All the
Bibles and service-books that could be found, and a great number of other Christian writings, were
thrown into the flames; and many Christians who refused to give up their holy books were put to
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death. The plate of churches was carried off, and was turned to profane uses, as the vessels of the
Jewish temple had formerly been by Belshazzar.
The sufferings of the Christians were frightful, but after what has been already said of such
things, I will not shock you by telling you much about them here. Some were thrown to wild beasts;
some were burnt alive, or roasted on gridirons; some had their skins pulled off, or their flesh scraped
from their bones; some were crucified; some were tied to branches of trees, which had been bent
so as to meet, and then they were torn to pieces by the starting asunder of the branches. Thousands
of them perished by one horrible death or other, so that the heathens themselves grew tired and
disgusted with inflicting or seeing their sufferings; and at length, instead of putting them to death,
they sent them to work in mines, or plucked out one of their eyes, or lamed one of their hands or
feet, or set bishops to look after horses or camels, or to do other work unfit for persons of their
venerable character. And it is impossible to think what miseries even those who escaped must have
undergone, for the persecution lasted ten years, and they had not only to witness the sufferings of
their own dear relations, or friends, or teachers, but knew that the like might, at any hour, come on
themselves.
It was in the East that the persecution was hottest and lasted longest; for in Europe it was not
much felt after the first two years. The Emperor Constantius, who ruled over Gaul (now called
France), Spain and Britain, was kind to the Christians, and after his death, his son Constantine was
still more favourable to them. There were several changes among the other emperors, and the
Christians felt them for better or for worse, according to the character of each emperor; but it is
needless to speak much of them in a little book like this. Galerius went on in his cruelty until, at
the end of eight years, he found that it had been of no use towards putting down the Gospel, and
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that he was sinking under a fearful disease, something like that of which Herod, who had killed St.
James, died (Acts xii. 23). He then thought with grief and horror of what he had done, and (perhaps
in the hope of getting some relief from the God of Christians) he sent forth a proclamation allowing
them to rebuild their churches, and to hold their worship, and begging them to remember him in
their prayers. Soon after this he died (AD 311).
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The cruellest of all the persecutors was Maximin, who, from the year 305, had possession of
Asia Minor, Syria, the Holy Land, and Egypt. When Galerius made his law in favour of the
Christians, Maximin for a while pretended to give them the same kind of liberty in his dominions.
But he soon changed again, and required that all his subjects should sacrifice—even that little babies
should take some grains of incense into their hands, and should burn it in honour of the heathen
gods; and when a season of great plenty followed after this, Maximin boasted that it was a sign of
the favour with which the gods received his law. But it very soon appeared how false his boast was,
for famine and plague began to rage throughout his dominions. The Christians, of course, had their
share in the distress; but instead of triumphing over their persecutors they showed the true spirit of
the Gospel by treating them with kindness, by relieving the poor, by tending the sick, and by burying
the dead, who had been abandoned by their own nearest relations.
Although there is no room to give any particular account of the martyrs here, there is one of
them who especially deserves to be remembered, because he was the first who suffered in our own
island. This good man, Alban, while he was yet a heathen, fell in with a poor Christian priest, who
was trying to hide himself from the persecutors. Alban took him into his own house, and sheltered
him there; and he was so much struck with observing how the priest prayed to God, and spent long
hours of the night in religious exercises, that he soon became a believer in Christ. But the priest
was hotly searched for, and information was given that he was hidden in Alban’s house. And when
37
the soldiers came to look for him there, Alban knew their errand, and put on the priest’s dress, so
that the soldiers seized him and carried him before the judge. The judge found that they had brought
the wrong man, and, in his rage at the disappointment, he told Alban that he must himself endure
the punishment which had been meant for the other. Alban heard this without any fear, and on
being questioned, he declared that he was a Christian, a worshipper of the one true God, and that
he would not sacrifice to idols which could do no good. He was put to the torture, but bore it gladly
for his Saviour’s sake, and then, as he was still firm in professing his faith, the judge gave orders
that he should be beheaded. And when he had been led out to the place of execution, which was a
little grassy knoll that rose gently on one side of the town, the soldier, who was to have put him to
death, was so moved by the sight of Alban’s behaviour, that he threw away his sword, and desired
to be put to death with him. They were both beheaded, and the town of Verulam, where they
suffered, has since been called St. Alban’s, from the name of the first British martyr.
This martyrdom took place early in the persecution; but, (as we have seen) Constantius afterwards
protected the British Christians, and his son Constantine, who succeeded to his share in the empire,
treated them with yet greater favour. In the year 312, Constantine marched against Maxentius, who
had usurped the government of Italy and Africa. Constantine seems to have been brought up by his
father to believe in one God, although he did not at all know who this God was, nor how He had
revealed Himself in Holy Scripture. But as he was on his way to fight Maxentius, he saw in the sky
a wonderful appearance, which seemed like the figure of a cross, with words around it—“By this
conquer!” He then caused the cross to be put on the standards (or colours) of his army; and when
he had defeated Maxentius, he set up at Rome a statue of himself, with a cross in its right hand,
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and with an inscription which declared that he owed his victory to that saving sign. About the same
time that Constantine overcame Maxentius, Licinius put down Maximin in the East. The two
conquerors now had possession of the whole empire, and they joined in publishing laws by which
Christians were allowed to worship God freely according to their conscience (AD 313).
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CHAPTER X: CONSTANTINE THE GREAT (AD 313–337)
It was a great thing for the Church that the emperor of Rome should give it liberty; and
Constantine, after sending forth the laws which put an end to the persecution, went on to make
other laws in favour of the Christians. But he did not himself become a Christian all at once, although
he built many churches and gave rich presents to others, and although he was fond of keeping
company with bishops, and of conversing with them about religion. Licinius, the emperor of the
East, who had joined with Constantine in his first laws, afterwards quarrelled with him, and
persecuted the eastern Christians cruelly, but Constantine defeated him in battle (AD 324), and the
whole empire was once more united under one head.
After his victory over Licinius, Constantine declared himself a Christian, which he had not
done before; and he used to attend the services of the Church very regularly, and to stand all the
time that the bishops were preaching, however long their sermons might be. He used even himself
to write a kind of discourses something like sermons, and he read them aloud in the palace to all
his court; but he really knew very little of Christian doctrine, although he was very fond of talking
part in disputes about it. And, although he professed to be a Christian, he had not yet been made a
39
member of Christ by baptism, for in those days, people had so high a notion of the grace of baptism
that many of them put off their baptism until they supposed that they were on their deathbed, for
fear lest they should sin after being baptized, and so should lose the benefit of the sacrament. This
was of course wrong; for it was a sad mistake to think that they might go on in sin so long as they
were not baptized. God, we know, might have cut them off at any moment in the midst of all their
sins, and even if they were spared, there was a great danger that, when they came to beg for baptism
at last, they might not have that true spirit of repentance and faith without which they could not be
fit to receive the grace of the sacraments. And therefore the teachers of the Church used to warn
people against putting off their baptism out of a love for sin; and when any one had received
“clinical” baptism, as it was called (that is to say, baptism on a sick-bed), if he afterwards got well
again, he was thought but little of in the Church.
But to come back to Constantine. He had many other faults besides his unwillingness to take
on himself the duties of a baptized Christian; and, although we are bound to thank God for having
turned his heart to favour the Church, we must not be blind to the emperor’s faults. Yet, with all
these faults, he really believed the Gospel, and meant to do what he could for the truth.
It took a long time to put down heathenism; for it would not have been safe or wise to force
people to become Christians before they had come to see the falsehood of their old religion.
Constantine, therefore, only made laws against some of its worst practices, and forbade any sacrifices
to be offered in the name of the empire; but he did not hinder the heathens from sacrificing on their
own account if they liked.
Soon after professing himself a Christian, the emperor began to build a new capital in the East.
There had been a town called Byzantium on the spot before; but the new city was far grander, and
40
he gave it the name of Constantinople, which means the City of Constantine. It was meant to be
altogether Christian,—unlike Rome, which was full of temples of heathen gods. And the emperors,
from this time, usually lived at Constantinople, or at some other place in the East.
There will be more to say about Constantine in the next chapter. In the mean time, let us look
at the progress of the Gospel.
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It had, by this time, made its way into many countries beyond the bounds of the empire. There
were Christians in Scotland and in India; there had long been great numbers of Christians in Persia
and Arabia. Many of the Goths, who then lived about the Danube, had been converted by captives
whom they carried off in their plundering expeditions, during the reigns of Valerian and Gallienus
(about AD 260), and other roving tribes had been converted by the same means. About the end of
the third century, Gregory, who is called the Enlightener, had gone as a missionary bishop into
Armenia, where he persuaded the king, Tiridates, to receive the Gospel, and to establish it as the
religion of his country: so that Armenia had the honour of being the first Christian kingdom. The
Georgians were converted in the reign of Constantine; and about the same time, the Ethiopians or
Abyssinians (who live to the south of Egypt) were brought to the knowledge of the truth in a very
remarkable way.
There was a rich Christian of Tyre, named Meropius, who was a philosopher, and wished to
make discoveries in the countries towards India, which were then but little known. So he set out
in a ship of his own, sailed down the Red Sea, and made a voyage to the East. On his way back,
he and his crew landed at a place on the coast of Ethiopia, in search of fresh water, when the people
of the country fell on them, and killed all but two youths named Aedesius and Frumentius, who
were relations of Meropius. These lads were taken to the king’s court, where, as they were better
educated than the Ethiopians, they soon got into great favour and power. The king died after a time,
41
leaving a little boy to succeed him; and the two strangers were asked to carry on the government
of the country until the prince should be old enough to take it into his own hands. They did this
faithfully, and stayed many years in Ethiopia; and they used to look out for any Christian sailors
or merchants who visited the country, and to hold meetings with such strangers and others for
worship, although they were distressed that they had no clergy to minister to them. At length the
young prince grew up to manhood, and was able to govern his kingdom for himself; and then
Aedesius and Frumentius set out for their own country, which they had been longing to see for so
many years. Aedesius got back to Tyre, where he became a deacon of the Church. But Frumentius
stopped at Alexandria, and told his tale to the bishop, the great St. Athanasius (of whom we shall
hear more by-and-by), and he begged that a bishop might be sent into Ethiopia to settle and govern
the Church there. Athanasius, considering how faithful and wise Frumentius had shown himself in
all his business, how greatly he was respected and loved by the Ethiopians, and how much he had
done to spread the gospel in the land of his captivity, said that no one was so fit as he to be bishop;
and he consecrated Frumentius accordingly. To this day the chief bishop of the Abyssinian Church,
instead of being chosen from among the clergy of the country, is always a person sent by the
Egyptian bishop of Alexandria, and thus the Abyssinians still keep up the remembrance of the way
in which their Church was founded, although the bishopric of Alexandria is now sadly fallen from
the height at which it stood in the days of Athanasius and Frumentius.
Constantine used his influence with the king of Persia, whose name was Sapor, to obtain good
treatment for the Christians of that country; and the Gospel continued to make progress there. But
this naturally raised the jealousy of the magi, who were the priests of the heathen religion of Persia,
and they looked out for some means of doing mischief to the Christians. So a few years after the
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death of Constantine, when a war broke out between Sapor and the next emperor, Constantius,
these magi got about the king, and told him that his Christian subjects would be ready to betray
him to the Romans, from whom they had got their religion. Sapor then issued orders that all
Christians should pay an enormous tax, unless they would worship the gods of the Persians. Their
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chief bishop, whose name was Symeon, on receiving this order, answered that the tax was more
than they could pay, and that they worshipped the true God alone, who had made the sun, which
the Persians ignorantly adored.
Sapor then sent forth a second order, that the bishops, priests, and deacons of the Christians
should be put to death, that their churches should be destroyed, and that the plate and ornaments
of the churches should be taken for profane uses, and he sent for Symeon, who was soon brought
before him. The bishop had been used to make obeisance to the king, after the fashion of the country;
but on coming into his presence now, he refused to do so, lest it should be taken as a sign of that
reverence which he was resolved to give to God alone. Sapor then required him to worship the sun,
and told him that by doing so he might deliver himself and his people. But the bishop answered,
that if he had refused to do reverence to the king, much more must he refuse such honour to the
sun, which was a thing without reason or life. On this, the king ordered that he should be thrown
into prison until next day.
As he was on his way to prison, Symeon passed an old and faithful servant of the king, named
Uthazanes, who had brought up Sapor from a child, and stood high in his favour. Uthazanes, seeing
the bishop led away in chains, fell on his knee and saluted him in the Persian fashion. But Symeon
turned away his head, and could not look at him; for Uthazanes had been a Christian, and had lately
denied the faith. The old man’s conscience was smitten by this, and he burst out into lamentation—“If
my old and familiar friend disowns me thus, what may I expect from my God whom I have denied!”
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His words were heard, and he was carried before the king, who tried to move him both by threats
and by kindness. But Uthazanes stood firm against everything, and, as he could not be shaken in
his faith, he was sentenced to be beheaded. He then begged the king, for the sake of the love which
had long been between them, to grant him the favour that it might be proclaimed why he died—that
he was not guilty of any treason, but was put to death only for being a Christian. Sapor was very
willing to allow this, because he thought that it would frighten others into worshipping his gods.
But it turned out as Uthazanes had hoped; for when it was seen how he loved his faith better than
life itself, other Christians were encouraged to suffer, and even some heathens were brought over
to the Gospel. Bishop Symeon was put to death after having seen a hundred of his clergy suffer
before his eyes; and the persecution was renewed from time to time throughout the remainder of
Sapor’s long reign.
CHAPTER XI: THE COUNCIL OF NICAEA (AD 325)
We might expect to find that, when the persecutions by the heathen were at an end within the
Roman empire, Christians lived together in peace and love, according to their Lord’s commandment;
but it is a sad truth that they now began to be very much divided by quarrels among themselves.
There had, indeed, been many false teachers in earlier times; but now, when the emperor had become
a Christian, the troubles caused by such persons reached much further than before. The emperors
took part in them, and made laws about them, and the whole empire was stirred by them.
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Constantine was, as I have said (p. 40), very fond of taking a part in Church matters, without
knowing much about them. Very soon after the first law by which he gave liberty to the Christians,
he was called in to settle a quarrel; which had been raised in Africa by the followers of one Donatus,
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who separated from the Church and set up bishops of their own, because they said that the bishops
of Carthage and some others had not behaved rightly when the persecutors required them to deliver
up the Scriptures. I will tell you more about these Donatists (as they are called) by-and-by (see
Chapter XXI, parts 3, 4, and 5), and I mention them now only because it was they who first incited
the emperor to judge in a dispute about religion.
When Constantine put down Licinius and got possession of the East (as has been said), he found
that a dispute of a different kind from the quarrel of the Donatists was raging there. One Arius, a
presbyter (or priest) of Alexandria, had begun some years before this time to deny that our blessed
Lord was God from everlasting. Arius was a crafty man, and did all that he could to make his
opinion look as well as possible; but, try as he might, he was obliged to own that he believed our
Lord to be a “creature”. And the difference between the highest of created beings and God, the
maker of all creatures, is infinite; so that it mattered little how Arius might smooth over his shocking
opinion, so long as he did not allow our Lord to be truly God from all eternity.
The bishop of Alexandria, whose name was Alexander, excommunicated Arius for his impiety;
that is to say, he solemnly turned him out of the Church, so that no faithful Christian should have
anything to do with him in religious matters. Thus Arius was obliged to leave Egypt, and he lived
for a while at Nicomedia, with a bishop who was an old friend of his. And while he was there, he
made a set of songs to be sung at meals, and others for travellers, sailors, and the like. He hoped
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that people would learn these songs, without considering what mischief was in them, and that so
his heresy would be spread.
When Constantine first heard of these troubles, he tried to quiet them by advising Alexander
and Arius not to dispute about trifles. But he soon found that this would not do, and that the question
whether our Lord and Saviour were God or a creature was so far from being a trifle, that it was one
of the most serious of all questions. In order, therefore, to get this and some other matters settled,
he gave orders for a general council to meet. Councils of bishops within a certain district had long
been common. In many countries they were regularly held once or twice a year; and, besides these
regular meetings, others were sometimes called together to consider any business which was
particularly pressing Some of these councils were very great; for instance, the bishop of Alexander
could call together the bishops of all Egypt, and the bishop of Antioch could call together all the
bishops of Syria and some neighbouring countries. But there was no bishop who could call a council
of the whole Church, because there was no one who had any power over more than a part of it. But
now, Constantine, as he had become a Christian, thought that he might gather a council from all
quarters of his empire, and this was the first of what are called the general councils.
It met in the year 325, at Nicaea (or Nice), in Bithynia, and 318 bishops attended it. A number
of clergy and other persons were also present; even some heathen philosophers went out of curiosity
to see what the Christians were to do. Many of the bishops were very homely and simple men, who
had not much learning; but their great business was only to say plainly what their belief had always
been, so that it might be known whether the doctrines of Arius agreed with this or no; and thus the
good bishops might do their part very well, although they were not persons of any great learning
or cleverness. One of these simpler bishops was drawn into talk by a philosopher, who tried to
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puzzle him about the truth of the Gospel. The bishop was not used to argue or to dispute much, and
might have been no match for the philosopher in that way, but he contented himself with saying
his Creed; and the philosopher was so struck with this, that he took to thinking more seriously of
Christianity than he had ever thought before, and he ended in becoming a Christian himself.
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There was a great deal of arguing about Arius and his opinions, and the chief person who spoke
against him was Athanasius, a clergyman of Alexandria, who had come with the bishop, Alexander.
Athanasius could not sit as a judge in the council, because he was not a bishop, but he was allowed
to speak in the presence of the bishops, and pointed out to them the errors which Arius tried to hide.
So at last Arius was condemned, and the emperor banished him with some of his chief followers.
And, in order to set forth the true Christian faith beyond all doubt, the council made that creed
which is read in the Communion-service in our churches—all but some of the last part of it, which
was made at a later time, as we shall see. It is called the Nicene Creed, from the name of the place
where the council met; and the great point in it is that it declares our blessed Lord to be “Very God
of Very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance” (that is to say, of the same nature) “with
the Father.” For this truth, that our Lord has the same nature with the Almighty Father—this truth
that He is really God from everlasting—was what the Arians could not be brought to own.
The emperor attended the council during the latter part of its sittings; and a story is told of him
and a bishop named Acesius, who belonged to the sect of Novatianists. You will remember that
this sect broke off from the Church in St. Cyprian’s days, because Novatian and others thought that
St. Cyprian and the Church were too easy with those who repented after having sacrificed in time
of persecution (see page 27); and, from having begun thus, it came to be hard in its notions as to
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the treatment of all sorts of penitents. But, as it had been only about the treatment of persons who
had behaved weakly in persecution that the Novatianists at first differed from the Church, and as
persecution by the heathens was now at an end, Constantine hoped that, perhaps, they might be
persuaded to return to the Church; so he invited some bishops of the sect to attend the councils and
Acesius among them. When the creed had been made, Acesius declared that it was all true, and
that it was the same faith which he had always believed; and he was quite satisfied with the rules
which the council made as to the time of keeping Easter, and as to some other things. “Why, then,”
asked Constantine, “will you not join the Church?” Acesius said that he did not think the Church
strict enough in dealing with penitents. “Take a ladder, then,” said the emperor, “and go up to
heaven by yourself!”
CHAPTER XII: ST. ATHANASIUS,
PART I (AD 325–337)
Alexander, the bishop of Alexandria by whom Arius had been excommunicated, died soon after
returning home from the Council of Nicaea; and Athanasius, who was then about thirty years of
age, was chosen in his stead, and governed the Alexandrian Church for six-and-forty years. Every
one knows the name of St. Athanasius, from the creed which is called after it. That creed, indeed,
was not made by St. Athanasius himself; but, as the Prayer-book says, it is “commonly called” his,
because it sets forth the true Christian faith, of which he was the chief defender in his day. And we
are bound to honour this learned and holy bishop, as the man by whom especially God was pleased
that His truth should be upheld and established against all the craft of Arius and his party, and even
against all the power of the emperors of Rome.
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48
For, although Arius had been sent into banishment, he soon managed to get into favour at the
emperor’s court. One of his friends, a priest, gained the ear of Constantine’s sister, and this princess,
when she was dying, recommended the priest to the emperor. Neither Constantine nor his sister
understood enough of the matter to be on their guard against the deceits of the Arian, who was able
to persuade the emperor that Arius had been ill-used, and that he did not really hold the opinions
for which the council had condemned him. Arius, then, was allowed to return from banishment,
and Constantine desired Athanasius to receive him back into the Church, saying that he was not
guilty of the errors which had been laid to his charge. But Athanasius knew that this was only a
trick; and he answered that, as Arius had been condemned by a council of the whole Church, he
could not be restored by anything less than another such council.
The Arians, on finding that they could not win Athanasius over, resolved to attack him. They
contrived that all sorts of charges against him should be carried to the emperor; and in the year 335,
a council was held at Tyre for his trial. One story was, that he had killed an Egyptian bishop, named
Arsenius, that he had cut off his hand, and had used it for magical purposes (for, among other things,
Athanasius was said by his enemies to be a sorcerer!), and the dried hand of a man was shown,
which was said to be that of Arsenius. But when the time came for examining this charge, what
was the confusion of the accusers at seeing Arsenius himself brought into the council! He was
dressed in a long cloak, and Athanasius lifted it up, first on one side, and then on the other, so as
to show that the man was not only alive, but had both his hands safe and sound. The leaders of the
Arians had known that Arsenius was not dead, but they had hoped that he would not appear. But,
happily for Athanasius, one of his friends had discovered Arsenius, and had kept him hidden until
the right moment came for producing him.
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Athanasius was able to answer the other charges against him, as well as that about Arsenius;
and the Arians, seeing that they must contrive some new accusation, sent some of his bitterest
enemies into Egypt, to rake up all the tales that they could find. Athanasius knew what he might
expect from people who could act so unfairly; he therefore resolved not to wait for their return, but
got on board a ship which was bound for Constantinople. On arriving there, he posted himself in
a spot outside the city, where he expected the emperor to pass in returning from a ride; and when
Constantine came up, he threw himself in his way. The emperor was startled; but Athanasius told
him who he was, and entreated him, by the thought of that judgment in which princes as well as
subjects must one day appear, to order that the case should be tried before himself, instead of leaving
it to judges from whom no justice was to be looked for. The emperor agreed to this, and was very
angry with those who had behaved so unjustly in the council at Tyre. But after a time some of the
Arians got about him and told him another story—that Athanasius had threatened to stop the sailing
of the fleet which carried corn from Alexandria to Constantinople. This was a charge which touched
Constantine very closely, because Constantinople depended very much on the Egyptian corn for
food, and he thought that the bishop, who had so much power at Alexandria, might perhaps be able
to stop the fleet, and to starve the people of the capital, if he pleased. And—whether the emperor
believed the story, or whether he wished to shelter Athanasius for a while from his persecutors by
putting him out of the way—he sent him into banishment at Treves, on the banks of the Moselle,
in a part of Gaul which is now reckoned to belong to Germany. Except for the separation from his
flock, this banishment would have been no great hardship for Athanasius, for he was treated with
great respect by the bishop of Treves, and by the emperor’s eldest son, who lived there, and all
good men honoured him for his stedfastness in upholding the true faith.
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50
But, although Athanasius was removed, the Alexandrian Church would not admit Arius. So,
after a while, the emperor resolved to have him admitted at Constantinople, and a council of bishops
agreed that it should be so. The bishop of Constantinople, whose name was Alexander, and who
was almost a hundred years old, was grievously distressed at this; he desired his people to entreat
God, with fasting and prayer, that it might not come to pass, and he threw himself under the altar,
and prayed very earnestly that the evil which was threatened might be somehow turned away: or
that, at least, he himself might not live to see it.
At length, on the evening before the day which had been fixed for receiving Arius into the
Church, he was going through the streets of Constantinople, in high spirits, and talking with some
friends of what was to take place on the morrow. But all at once he felt himself ill, and went into
a house which was near, and in a few minutes he was dead! His death, taking place at such a time
and in such a way, made a great impression, and people were ready enough to look on it as a direct
judgement of God on his impiety. But Athanasius, although he felt the awfulness of the unhappy
man’s sudden end, did not take it on himself to speak in this way; and we too shall do well not to
pronounce judgment in such cases, remembering what our Lord said as to the Galileans who were
slain by Pilate, and as to the men who were killed by the falling of the tower of Siloam (St. Luke
xiii. 1–5). While we abhor the errors of Arius, let us leave the judgment of him to God
Although Constantine in his last years was very much in the hands of the Arians, we must not
suppose that he meant to favour their heresy. For these people (as I have said already, and shall
have occasion to say again) were very crafty, and took great pains to hide the worst of their opinions.
They used words which sounded quite right, except to the few persons who, like Athanasius, were
quick enough to understand what bad meanings might be disguised under these fair words. And
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whenever they wished to get one of the faithful bishops turned out, they took care not to attack him
about his faith, but about some other things, as we have seen in the case of Athanasius. Thus they
managed to blind the emperor, who did not know much about the matter, so that, while they were
using him as a tool, and were persuading him to help them with all his power, he all the while
fancied that he was firmly maintaining the Nicene faith.
Constantine, after all that he had done in religious disputes, was still unbaptized. Perhaps he
was a “catechumen”, which (as has been explained before, see page 18) was the name given to
persons who were supposed to be in a course of training for baptism; but it is not certain that he
was even so much as a catechumen. At last, shortly after the death of Arius, the emperor felt himself
very sick, and believed that his end was near. He sent for some bishops, and told them that he had
put off his baptism because he had wished to receive it in the river Jordan, like our Lord Himself;
but as God had not granted him this, he begged that they would baptize him. He was baptized
accordingly, and during the remaining days of his life he refused to wear any other robes than the
white dress which used then to be put on at baptism, by way of signifying the cleansing of the soul
from sin. And thus the first Christian emperor died at a palace near Nicomedia, on Whitsunday in
the year 337.
PART II (AD 337–361)
At Constantine’s death, the empire was divided among his three sons. The eldest of them, whose
name was the same as his father’s, and the youngest, Constans, were friendly to the true faith. But
the second son, Constantius, was won over by the Arians; and as, through the death of his brothers,
he got possession of the whole empire within a few years, his connexion with that party led to great
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mischief. All through his reign, there were unceasing disputes about religion. Councils were almost
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continually sitting in one place or another, and bishops were posting about to one of them after
another at the emperor’s expense. Constantius did not mean ill, but he went even further than his
father in meddling with things which he did not understand.
The Arians went on in the same cunning way as before. I may mention, by way of example,
the behaviour of Leontius, bishop of Antioch. The Catholics (that is to say, those who held the faith
which the Church throughout all the world held (the word “Catholic”, which means “Universal”,
is not to be confounded with “Roman-Catholic”)), used to sing in church, as we do— “Glory be to
the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost;” but the Arians sang, “Glory be to the Father,
by the Son, in the Holy Ghost”—for they did not allow the Second and Third Persons to be of the
same nature with the First. Leontius, then, who was an Arian, and yet did not wish people to know
exactly what he was, used to mumble his words, so that nobody could make them out, until he came
to the part in which all parties agreed; and then he sang out loudly and clearly— “As it was in the
beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.” He was an old man, and sometimes
he would point to his white hair, and say, “When this snow melts, there will be a great deal of mud,”
meaning that after his death the two parties would come to open quarrels, which he had tried to
prevent during his lifetime by such crafty behaviour as that which has just been mentioned.
The three young emperors met shortly after their father’s death. It was agreed between them
that Athanasius should be allowed to return to Alexandria; and for this favour he was chiefly
indebted to young Constantine, who had known him during his banishment at Treves. The bishop
returned accordingly, and was received with great rejoicing by his flock. But in about three years
his enemies contrived that he should be again turned out (AD 341), and he was in banishment eight
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years. He was then restored again (AD 349); but his enemies watched their time and spared no
pains to get rid of him. One by one, they contrived to thrust out all the chief bishops who would
have been inclined to take part with him; and at length, in the beginning of 356, Constantius sent
a general named Syrianus to Alexandria, with orders to drive out Athanasius. The Alexandrians
were so much attached to their great bishop that there was a fear lest they might prevent any open
attempt against him. But Syrianus contrived to throw them off their guard, and one night, while
Athanasius was keeping watch with many of his clergy and people, in one of the churches (as the
Christians of those days used to do before their great festivals and at other times), Syrianus suddenly
beset the church with a great number of soldiers, and a multitude made up of Arians, Jews and the
heathen rabble of the city. When Athanasius heard the noise outside the church, he sat down calmly
on his throne, and desired the congregation to chant the hundred and thirty-sixth psalm, in which
God’s deliverances of His people in old times are celebrated; and the whole congregation joined
in the last part of every verse—“For His mercy endureth for ever.” The doors were shut, but the
soldiers forced them open and rushed in; and it was a fearful sight to see their drawn swords and
their armour flashing by the lamplight in the house of God. As they advanced up the church, many
of the congregation were trodden down or crushed to death, or pierced through with their darts.
Athanasius stood calm in the midst of all the terrible din. His clergy, when they saw the soldiers
pushing on towards the sanctuary (as the part of the church was called that was railed off for the
clergy), entreated him to save himself by flight; but he declared that he would not go until his people
were safe, and waited until most of them had made their escape through doors in the upper part of
the church. At last, when the soldiers were pressing very close to the sanctuary, the clergy closed
round their bishop, and hurried him away by a secret passage. And when they had got him out of
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the church, they found that he had fainted; for although his courage was high, his body was weak
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and delicate, and the dreadful scene had overcome him. But he escaped to the deserts of Egypt,
where he lived in peace among the monks for six years, until the death of Constantius. His enemies
thought that he might perhaps, seek a refugee in Ethiopia, and Constantius wrote to beg that the
princes of that country should not shelter him, and that the bishop, Frumentius (see page 41), might
be sent to receive instruction in the faith from the Arian bishop who was put into the see of
Alexandria. But Athanasius was safe elsewhere, and Frumentius wisely stayed at home.
The new Arian bishop of Alexandria was a Cappadocian named George. He was a coarse,
ignorant, and violent man, and behaved with great cruelty to Athanasius’s friends—even putting
many of them to death. But Athanasius from his quiet retreat, kept a watch over all that was done
as to the affairs of the Church, both at Alexandria and elsewhere; and from time to time he wrote
books, which reached places where he himself could not venture to appear. So that, although he
was not seen during these years, he made himself felt, both to the confusion of the Arians, and to
the comfort and encouragement of the faithful.
PART III: (AD 361–371)
Constantius had no children, and after the death of Constans (AD 350), his nearest male relation
was a cousin named Julian. The emperor gave his sister in marriage to this cousin, and also gave
him the government of a part of the empire; but he always treated him with distrust and jealousy,
so that Julian never loved him. And this was not the worst of it; for Julian, who had lost his father
when he was very young, and had been brought up under the direction of Constantius, took a strong
dislike to his cousin’s religion, which was forced on him in a way that a lively boy could not well
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be expected to relish. He was obliged to spend a great part of his time in attending the services of
the Church, and was even made a reader, (which was one of the lowest kinds of ministers in the
Church of those times,) and, unfortunately, the end of all this was, that instead of being truly
religious, he learned to be a hypocrite. When he grew older, and was left more to himself, he fell
into the hands of the heathen philosophers, who were very glad to get hold of a prince who might
one day be emperor. So Julian’s mind was poisoned with their opinions, and he gave up all belief
in the Gospel, although he continued to profess himself a Christian for nine years longer. On account
of his having thus forsaken the faith he is commonly called the “Apostate.”
At length, when Julian was at Paris, early in the year 361, Constantius sent him some orders
which neither he nor his soldiers were disposed to obey. The soldiers lifted him up on a shield and
proclaimed him emperor; and Julian set out at their head to fight for the throne. He marched boldly
eastward, until he came to the Danube; then he embarked his troops and descended the great river
for many hundreds of miles into the country which is now called Hungary. Constantius left Antioch,
and was marching to meet Julian’s army, when he was taken ill, and died at a little town in Cilicia.
Like his father, he was baptized only a day or two before his death.
Julian now came into possession of the empire without further dispute; and he did all that he
could to set heathenism up again. But in many parts of the empire, Christianity had taken such root
that very few of the people held to the old religion, or wished to see it restored. Thus, we are told
that once, when the emperor went to a famous temple near Antioch, on a great heathen festival, in
the hope of finding things carried on as they had been before Constantine’s time, only one old priest
was to be seen; and, instead of the costly sacrifices which had been offered in the former days of
heathenism, the poor old man had nothing better than a single goose to offer.
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Julian knew that in past times Christians had always been ready to suffer for their faith, and
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that the patience of the martyrs had always led to the increase of the Church. He did not think it
wise, therefore, to go to work in the same way as the earlier persecuting emperors, but he contrived
to annoy the Christians very much by other means, and sometimes great cruelties were committed
against them under his authority. Yet, with all this, he pretended to allow them the exercise of their
religion, and he gave leave to those who had been banished by Constantius to return home,—not
that he really meant to do them any kindness, but because he hoped that they would all fall to
quarrelling among themselves, and that he should be able to take advantage of their quarrels. But
in this hope he was happily disappointed, for they had learnt wisdom by suffering, and were disposed
to make peace with each other as much as possible, while they were all threatened by the enemies
of the Saviour’s very name.
The first thing that the heathens of Alexandria did when they heard of the death of Constantius
had been to kill the Arian bishop, George; for he had behaved in such a way that the heathens hated
him even more than the Catholics did. Another Arian bishop was set up in his place; but when
Julian had given leave for the banished to return, Athanasius came back, and the Arian was turned
out.
The Alexandrians received Athanasius with great joy and he did all that was in his power to
reconcile the parties of Christians among themselves. For, although no one could be more earnest
than he in maintaining every particle of the faith necessary for a true Christian, he was careful not
to insist on things which were not necessary. He knew, too, that people who really meant alike
were often divided from each other by not understanding one another’s words; and he was always
ready to make allowance for them, as far as he could do so without giving away the truth. But Julian
was afraid to let him remain at Alexandria, and was greatly provoked at hearing that he had converted
and baptized some heathen ladies of rank. So the emperor wrote to the Alexandrians, telling them
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that, although they might choose another bishop for themselves, they must not let Athanasius remain
among them, and banishing the bishop from all Egypt. Athanasius, when he heard of this, said to
his friends, “Let us withdraw; this is but a little cloud which will soon pass over;” and he set off
up the river Nile in a boat. After a while, another boat was seen in pursuit of him; but Athanasius
then told his boatmen to turn round, and to sail down the river again; and when they met the other
boat, from which they had not been seen until after turning, they answered the questions of its crew
in such a way that they were allowed to pass without being suspected of having the bishop on board.
Thus Athanasius got safe back to the city, and there he lay hid securely while his enemies were
searching for him elsewhere. But after a little time he withdrew to the deserts, where he was
welcomed and sheltered by his old friends the monks.
In his hatred of Christianity, Julian not only tried to restore heathenism, but also showed favour
to the Jews. He sent for some of them, and asked why they did not offer sacrifice as their law had
ordered? They answered that it was not lawful to sacrifice except in the temple of Jerusalem, which
was now in ruins, and did not belong to them, so that they could no longer fulfil the duty of
sacrificing. Julian then gave them leave to build the temple up again, and the Jews came together
in vast numbers from the different countries into which they had been scattered. Many of them had
got great wealth in the lands of their banishment, and it is said that even the women laboured at the
work, carrying earth in their rich silken dresses, and that tools of silver were used in the building.
The Jews were full of triumph at the thought of being restored to their own land, and of reviving
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the greatness of David and Solomon. But it was not to be. An earthquake scattered the foundations
which had been laid; balls of fire burst forth from the ground, scorching and killing many of the
workmen; their tools were melted by lightning; and stories are told of other fearful sights, which
put an end to the attempt. Julian indeed, meant to set about it once more after returning from a war
which he had undertaken against the Persians. But he never lived to do so. Athanasius was not
mistaken when he said that his heathen emperor’s tyranny would be only as a passing cloud, for
Julian’s reign lasted little more than a year and a half in all. He led his army into Persia in the spring
of 363, and in June of that year he was killed in a skirmish by night.
Julian left no child to succeed him in the empire, and the army chose as his successor a Christian
named Jovian, who soon undid all that Julian had done in matters of religion. The new emperor
invited Athanasius to visit him at Antioch, and took his advice as to the restoration of the true faith.
But Jovian’s reign lasted only eight months, and Valentinian, who was then made emperor, gave
the empire of the East to his brother Valens, who was a furious Arian, and treated the Catholics
with great cruelty. We are told, for instance, that when eighty of their bishops had carried a petition
to him, he put them on board a ship, and when it had got out to sea, the sailors, by his orders, set
it on fire, and made their escape in boats, leaving the poor bishops to be burned to death.
Valens turned many “orthodox” bishops (that is to say, bishops “of the right faith”) out of their
sees, and meant to turn out Athanasius, who hid himself for a while in his father’s tomb. But the
people of Alexandria begged earnestly that their bishop might be allowed to remain with them, and
the emperor did not think it safe to deny their request, lest there should be some outbreak in the
city. And thus, while the faith of which Athanasius had so long been the chief defender, and for
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the sake of which he had borne so much, was under persecution in all other parts of the eastern
empire, the great bishop of Alexandria was allowed to spend his last years among his own flock
without disturbance. He died in the year 373, at the age of seventy-six.
CHAPTER XIII: THE MONKS.
In the story of St. Athanasius, monks have been more than once mentioned, and it is now time
to give some account of these people and of their ways.
The word “monk” properly means one who leads a “lonely” life; and the name was given to
persons who professed to withdraw from the world and its business that they might give themselves
up to serve God in religious thoughts and exercises. Among the Jews there had been whole classes
of people who practised this sort of retirement: some, called “Essenes”, lived near the Red Sea;
and others, called “Therapeutae,” in Egypt, where a great number of Jews had settled. Among the
heathens of the East, too, a like manner of living had been common for ages, as it still continues
to be; and many of them carry it to an excessive strictness, as we are told by travellers who have
visited India, Thibet, and other countries of Asia.
Nothing of the kind, however, is commanded for Christians in the New Testament; and when
Scripture warrant for the monkish life was sought for, the great patterns who were produced were
Elijah and St John the Baptist—the one of them an Old Testament prophet; the other, a holy man
who lived, indeed, in the days when our Lord Himself was on the earth, but who was not allowed
to enter into His Church, or to see it fully established by the coming of the Holy Ghost at the day
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of Pentecost. But still it was very natural that the notion of a life of strict poverty, retirement from
the world, and employment in spiritual things, should find favour with Christians, as a means of
fulfilling the duties of their holy calling, and so it seems that some of them took to this way of life
very early. But the first who is named as a “hermit” (that is to say, a dweller in the wilderness) was
Paul, a young man of Alexandria, who, in the year 251, fled from the persecution of Decius into
the Egyptian desert, where he is said to have lived ninety years. Paul, although he afterwards became
very famous, spent his days without being known, until, just before his death, he was visited by
another great hermit, St. Antony. But Antony himself was a person of great note and importance
in his own lifetime.
He was born in the district of Thebes, in Egypt, in the very same year that Paul withdrew from
the world. While a boy, he was thoughtful and serious. His parents died before he had reached the
age of twenty, and left him considerable wealth. One day, when in church, he was struck by hearing
the story of the rich young man who was charged to sell all that he had, give to the poor, and follow
our Lord (St. Luke xviii. 18–22). At another time he was moved by hearing the charge to “take no
thought for the morrow” (St. Matt. vi. 34). And in order to obey these commands (as he thought),
Antony parted with all that belonged to him, bade farewell to his only sister, and left his home,
with the intention of living in loneliness and devotion. He carried on this life for many years, and
several times changed his abode, that he might seek out some place still wilder and more remote
than the last. But he grew so famous that people flocked even into the depths of the wilderness to
see him. A number of disciples gathered around him, and hermits or monks began to copy his way
of life in other parts of Egypt. Antony’s influence became very great; he made peace between
enemies, comforted mourners, and gave advice to all who asked him as to spiritual concerns; and
when he took the part of any oppressed person who applied to him, his interference was always
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successful. Affairs of this kind sometimes obliged him to leave his cell (as the dwellings of the
monks were called); but he always returned as soon as possible, for he used to say that “a monk
out of his solitude is like a fish out of water.” Even the emperors, Constantine and his sons, wrote
to him with great respect, and asked him to visit their courts. He thanked them, but did not accept
their invitation, and he wrote more than once to them in favour of St. Athanasius, whom he steadily
supported in his troubles on account of the faith. On two great occasions he visited Alexandria, for
the purpose of strengthening his brethren in their sufferings for the truth. The first of these visits
was while the last heathen persecution, under Maximin, was raging (see page 36). Antony stood
by the martyrs at their trials and in their death, and took all opportunities of declaring himself a
Christian; but the persecutors did not venture to touch him: and, after waiting till the heat of the
danger was past, he again withdrew to the wilderness. The second visit was in the time of the Arian
disturbances, when his appearance had even a greater effect than before. The Catholics were
encouraged by his exhortations, and a great number of conversions took place in consequence.
Antony died, at the age of a hundred and five, in the year 356, a few days before the great bishop
of Alexandria was driven to seek a refuge in the desert. (see page 54)
Antony, as we have seen, was a hermit, living in the wilderness by himself. But by-and-by other
kinds of monks were established, who lived in companies together. Sometimes they were lodged
in clusters of little cells, each of them having his separate cell, or two or three living together;
sometimes the cells were all in one large building, called a monastery. The head of each monastery,
or of each cluster of cells, was called “abbot”, which means “father”. And in some cases there were
many monasteries belonging to one “order”, so that they were all considered as one society, and
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there was one chief abbot over all. Thus the order founded by Pachomius, on an island in the Nile,
soon spread, so that before his death it had eight monasteries, with three thousand monks among
them; and about fifty years later, it had no fewer than fifty thousand monks.
These monks of Pachomius lived in cells, each of which contained three. Each cluster of cells
had its abbot; the head of the order, who was called the “archimandrite” (which means chief of a
sheepfold), went round occasionally to visit all the societies which were under him, and the whole
order met every year at the chief monastery for the festival of Easter, and a second time in the
month of August. The monks of St. Pachomius prayed many times a day. They fasted every
Wednesday and Friday, and communicated every Sunday and Saturday. They took their meals
together and sang psalms before each. They were not allowed to talk at table, but sat with their
hoods drawn over their faces, so that no one could see his neighbours, or anything but the food
before him. Their dress was coarse and plain; the chief article of it was a rough goat-skin, in imitation
of the prophet Elijah. They slept with their clothes on, not in beds, but in chairs, which were of
such a shape as to keep them almost standing. They spent their time not only in prayers and other
religious exercises, but in various kinds of simple work, such as labouring in the fields, weaving
baskets, ropes, and nets, or making shoes. They had boats in which they sent the produce of their
labour down the Nile to Alexandria; and the money which they got by selling it was not only enough
to keep them, but enabled them to redeem captives, and to do such other acts of charity.
This account of the monks of St. Pachomius will give some notion of the monkish life in general,
although one order differed from another in various ways. All that the monks had was considered
to belong to them in common, after the pattern of the first Christians, as was supposed (Acts ii. 34;
iv. 32); and no one was allowed to have anything of his own. Thus we are told that when a monk
was found at his death to have left a hundred pieces of silver, which he had earned by weaving
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flax, his brethren, who were about three thousand in number, met to consider what should be done
with the money. Some were for giving it to the Church; some, to the poor. But the fathers of the
society quoted St. Peter’s words to Simon the sorcerer, “Thy money perish with thee” (Acts viii.
20), and on the strength of this text (which in truth had not much to do with the matter), they ordered
that it should be buried with its late owner. St. Jerome, who tells the story, says that this was not
done out of any wish to condemn the dead monk, but in order that others might be deterred from
hoarding.
These different kinds of monks were first established in various parts of Egypt; but their way
of life was soon taken up in other countries; and societies of women, who were called “nuns” (that
is to say “mothers”), were formed under the same kind of rules.
One thing which had much to do with making monkish life so common was, that when
persecution by the heathen was at an end, many Christians felt the want of something which might
assure them that they were separate from the world, as Christ’s true people ought to be. It was no
longer enough that they should call themselves Christians; for the world had come to call itself
Christian too. Perhaps we may think that it would have been better if those who wished to live
religiously had tried to go on doing their duty in the world, and to improve it by the example and
the influence of holy and charitable lives, instead of running away from it. And they were certainly
much mistaken if they fancied that by hiding themselves in the desert they were likely to escape
temptations. For temptations followed them into their retreats, and we have only too many proofs,
in the accounts of famous monks, that the effect of this mistake was often very sad indeed. And
we may be sure that if the good men who in those days were active in recommending the life of
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monks had been able to foresee how things would turn out, they would have been much more
cautious in what they said of it.
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It was not every one who was fit for such a life, and many took it up without rightly considering
whether they were fit for it. The kind of work which was provided for them was not enough to
occupy them thoroughly, and many of them suffered grievously from temptations to which their
idleness laid them open. It was supposed, indeed, that they might find the thoughts of heavenly
things enough to fill their minds; and, when a philosopher asked Antony how he could live without
books, he answered that for him the whole creation was a book, always at hand, in which he could
read God’s word whenever he pleased. But it was not every one who could find such delight in that
great book, and many of the monks, for want of employment, were tormented by all sorts of evil
thoughts, nay, some of them were even driven into madness by their way of life.
The monks ran into very strange mistakes as to their duty towards their kindred. Even Antony
himself, although he was free from many of the faults of spiritual pride and the like, which became
too common among his followers, thought himself bound to overcome his love for his young sister.
And, as another sample of the way in which monks were expected to deaden their natural affections,
I may tell you how his disciple Pior behaved. Pior, when a youth, left his father’s house, and vowed
that he would never again look on any of his relations—which was surely a very rash and foolish
and wrong vow. He went into the desert, and had lived there fifty years, when his sister heard that
he was still alive. She was too infirm to go in search of him, but she contrived that the abbot, under
whose authority he was, should order him to pay her a visit. Pior went accordingly, and, when he
had reached her house, he stood in front of it, and sent to tell her that he was there. The poor old
woman made all haste to get to him; her heart was full of love and delight at the thoughts of seeing
her brother again after so long a separation. But as soon as Pior heard the door opening, he shut his
eyes, and he kept them shut all through the meeting. He refused to go into his sister’s house, and
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when he had let her see him for a short time in this way, without showing her any token of kindness,
he hurried back to the desert.
In later times monks were usually ordained as clergy of the Church. But at first it was not
intended that they should be so, and in each monastery there were only so many clergy as were
needed for the performance of Divine Service and other works of the ministry. And in those early
days, many monks had a great fear of being ordained clergymen or bishops, because they thought
that the active business in which bishops and other clergy were obliged to engage, would hinder
their reaching to the higher degrees of holiness. Thus a famous monk, named Ammonius, on being
chosen for a bishopric, cut off one of his ears, thinking that this blemish would prevent his being
made a priest, as it would have done under the law of Moses (Lev. xxi. 17–23), and when he was
told that it was not so in the Christian Church, he threatened to cut out his tongue.
It was not long before the sight of the great respect which was paid to the monks led many
worthless people to call themselves monks for the sake of what they might get by doing so. These
fellows used to go about, wearing heavy chains, uncouthly dressed, and behaving roughly, and they
told outrageous stories of visions and of fights with devils which they pretended to have had. By
such tricks they got large sums of money from people who were foolish enough to encourage them;
and they spent it in the most shameful ways.
But besides these vile hypocrites, many monks who seem to have been sincere enough ran into
very strange extravagances. There was one kind of them called “Grazers”, who used to live among
mountains, without any roof to shelter them, browsing, like beasts, on grass and herbs, and by
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degrees growing much more like beasts than men. And in the beginning of the fifth century, one
Symeon founded a new sort of monks, who were called “Stylites” (that is to say, pillar saints), from
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a Greek word, which means a pillar. Symeon was a Syrian, and lived on the top of one pillar after
another for seven-and-thirty years. Each pillar was higher than the one before it; the height of the
last of them was forty cubits (or seventy feet), and the top of it was only a yard across. There
Symeon was to be seen, with a heavy iron chain round his neck, and great numbers of people flocked
to visit him; some of them even went all the way from our own country. And when he was dead,
a monk named Daniel got the old cowl which he had worn, and built himself a pillar near
Constantinople, where he lived three-and-thirty years. The high winds sometimes almost blew him
from his place, and sometimes he was covered for days with snow and ice, until the emperor Leo
made him submit to let a shed be built round the top of his pillar. The fame and influence which
these monks gained were immense. They were supposed to have the power of prophecy and of
miracles; they were consulted even by emperors and kings, in the most important matters; and
sometimes, on great occasions, when a stylite descended from his pillar, or some famous hermit
left his cell, and appeared among the crowds of a city, he was able to make everything bend to his
will.
We must not be blind to the serious errors of monkery; but we are bound also to own that God
was pleased to make it the means of great good. The monks did much for the conversion of the
heathen, and when the ages of darkness came on, after the overthrow of the Roman empire in the
West, they rendered inestimable service in preserving the knowledge of learning and religion,
which, but for them, might have utterly perished from the earth.
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CHAPTER XIV: ST. BASIL AND ST. GREGORY OF NAZIANZUM;
COUNCIL OF CONSTANTINOPLE,
PART I (AD 373–381)
Although St. Athanasius was now dead, God did not fail to raise up champions for the true
faith. Three of the most famous of these were natives of Cappadocia—namely, Basil, his brother
Gregory of Nyssa, and his friend Gregory of Nazianzum. But although Gregory of Nyssa was a
very good and learned man, and did great service to the truth by his writings, there was nothing
remarkable in the story of his life; so I shall only tell you about the other two.
Basil and Gregory of Nazianzum were both born about the year 329. Basil was of a noble
Christian family. Gregory’s father had belonged to a strange sect called Hypsistarians, whose
religion was a mixture of Jewish and heathen notions, but he had been converted from it by his
wife, Nonna, who was a very pious and excellent woman, and, before his son’s birth, he had risen
to be bishop of Nazianzum.
The two youths became acquainted at school in Cappadocia, and, when they were afterwards
sent to the famous schools of Athens, they grew into the closest friendship. They lived and read
and walked together: Gregory says that they had all things common, and that it was as if they had
only one soul in two bodies. Athens was an excellent place for learning all that the wise men of
this world could teach, and therefore students flocked to it from distant countries. But it was a
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dangerous place for Christian young men; for the teachers were heathen philosophers, and knew
well how to entangle them in arguments, so that many of the pupils, who did not rightly understand
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the grounds of their faith, were deceived into giving it up. Thus, at the very time when Basil and
Gregory were at Athens, Julian was also there, sucking up the heathen notions which led to so much
evil when he afterwards became emperor. But the two Cappadocians kept themselves clear from
all the snares of “philosophy and vain deceit” (Coloss. ii. 8); and although they were the foremost
of all the students in Athens for learning, and might have hoped to make a great figure in the world
by their talents, they resolved to give up all worldly ambition, and to devote themselves to the
ministry of the Church.
So they were both ordained to be clergymen, and their friendship continued as warm as ever.
(Gregory did many kind offices to Basil, and at length, when the archbishopric of Caesarea, the
chief city of Cappadocia, fell vacant, Gregory had a great share in getting his friend chosen to it.
Basil was now in a very high office, with many bishops under him; and he had become noted as
one of the chief defenders of the Catholic faith. And when the emperor Valens set up Arianism in
all other parts of his dominions, Basil remained at his post, and kept the Church of Caesarea free
from the heresy. Valens came into Cappadocia, and was angry that, while his wishes were obeyed
everywhere else, Basil should hold out against them: so he sent an officer named Modestus to
Caesarea, and ordered him to require the archbishop to submit, on pain of being turned out. Modestus
told Basil his errand, and threatened him with loss of his property, torture, banishment, and even
death, in case of his refusal. But Basil was not at all daunted. “Think of some other threat,” he said,
“for these have no influence on me. As for loss of property, I run no risk, for I have nothing to lose
except these mean garments and a few books. Nor does a Christian care for banishment, since he
has no home upon earth, but makes every country his own, or rather, he looks on the whole world
as God’s, and on himself as God’s pilgrim upon earth. Neither can tortures harm me, for my body
is so weak that the first blow would kill me; and death would be a gain, for it would but send me
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the sooner to Him for whom I live and labour, and to whom I have long been journeying.”
Modestus returned to his master with an account of what had been said, and Valens himself
soon after came to Caesarea. But when he went to the cathedral on the festival of the Epiphany,
and saw Basil at the head of his clergy, and witnessed their solemn service, he was struck with awe.
He wished to make an offering, as the custom was, but none of the clergy went to receive his gift,
and he almost fainted at the thought of being thus rejected from the Church, as if he had no part or
lot in it. He afterwards sent for Basil, and had some conversation with him, and the end of the affair
was, that he not only left Basil in possession of his see, but bestowed a valuable estate on a hospital
which the archbishop had lately founded.
While Basil had risen, by Gregory’s help, to be an archbishop, Gregory himself was still a
presbyter. He would not have taken even this office but that his father ordained him to it almost by
force; and he had a great dread of being raised to the high and difficult office of a bishop. But Basil,
for certain reasons, wished to establish a bishop in a little town called Sasima, and he fixed on his
old friend, without, perhaps, thinking so much as he ought to have thought, whether the place and
the man were likely to suit each other. The old bishop of Nazianzum did all that he could to overcome
his son’s unwillingness, and Gregory was consecrated; but he thought himself unkindly used, and
complained much of Basil’s behaviour in the matter.
After a time, Basil and other leaders of the “orthodox” (that is, of those who “held the right
faith”) urged Gregory to undertake a mission to Constantinople, and he agreed to go, in the hope
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of being able to do some good (AD 378). The bishopric of that great city had been in the hands of
Arians for nearly forty years, and although there were many people of other sects there, the orthodox
were but a handful. Gregory, when he began his labours, found that there was a strong feeling
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against him and his doctrine. He could not get the use of any church, and was obliged to hold his
service in a friend’s house. He was often attacked by the Arian mob; he was stoned; he was carried
before the magistrates on charges of disturbing the peace; the house which he had turned into a
chapel was broken into by night, and shocking outrages were committed in it. But the good Gregory
held on notwithstanding all this, and, after a while, his mild and grave character, his eloquent and
instructive preaching, and the piety of his life, wrought a great change, so that his little place of
worship became far too small to hold the crowds which flocked to it. While Gregory was thus
employed, Basil died, in the year 380.
PART II
Both parts of the empire were now again under orthodox princes. Valens had lost his life in
wars without leaving any children (AD 378), so that Valentinian’s sons, Gratian and Valentinian
the Second, were heirs to the whole. But Gratian felt the burden of government too much for himself,
a lad of nineteen, and for his little brother, who was but seven years old; and he gave up the East
to a brave Spaniard, named Theodosius, in the hope that he would be able to defend it.
Theodosius came to Constantinople in the year 380, and found things in the state which has
just been described. He turned the Arian bishop and his clergy out of the churches, and gave Gregory
possession of the cathedral. Gregory knew that the emperor wished to help the cause of the true
faith, and he did as Theodosius wished; but he was very sad and uneasy at being thus thrust on a
flock of which the greater part as yet refused to own him.
Theodosius then called a council, which met at Constantinople in the year 381, and is reckoned
as the second General Council (the Council of Nicaea having been the first). One act of this council
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was to add to the Nicene Creed some words about the Holy Ghost, by way of guarding against the
errors of a party who were called Macedonians after one Macedonius, who had been bishop of
Constantinople, for these people denied the true doctrine as to the Holy Ghost, although they had
given up the errors of Arius as to the Godhead of our blessed Lord.
But afterwards, some of the bishops who attended the council fell to disputing about the choice
of a bishop for Antioch; and Gregory, who tried to persuade them to agree, found that, instead of
heeding his advice, they all fell on him, and they behaved so shamefully to him that he gave up his
bishopric, which, indeed, he had before wished to do. Theodosius was very sorry to lose so good
a man from that important place; but Gregory was glad to get away from its troubles and anxieties
to the quiet life which he best loved. He took charge of the diocese of Nazianzum (which had been
vacant since his father’s death, some years before), until a regular bishop was appointed to it; and
he spent his last days in retirement, soothing himself with religious poetry and music. One of the
holiest men of our own Church, Bishop Ken (the author of the Morning and Evening Hymns), used
often to compare himself with St. Gregory of Nazianzum; for Bishop Ken, too, was driven from
his bishopric in troubled times, and, in the poverty, sickness, and sorrow of his last years, he, too,
used to find relief in playing on his lute, and in writing hymns and other devout poems.
Theodosius was resolved to establish the right faith, according as the council had laid it down.
But it seems that at one time some of the bishops were afraid lest an Arian, named Eunomius,
should get an influence over his mind, and should persuade him to favour the Arians. And there is
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a curious story of the way in which one of these bishops who was a homely old man, from some
retired little town, tried to show the emperor that he ought not to encourage heretics. On a day when
a number of bishops went to pay their respects at court, this old man, after having saluted the
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emperor very respectfully, turned to his eldest son, the young emperor Arcadius, and stroked his
head as if he had been any common boy. Theodosius was very angry at this behaviour, and ordered
that the bishop should be turned out. But as the officers of the palace were hurrying him towards
the door, the old man addressed the emperor, and told him that as he was angry on account of the
slight offered to the prince, even so would the Heavenly Father be offended with those who should
refuse to His Son the honours which they paid to Himself. Theodosius was much struck by this
speech; he begged the bishop’s forgiveness, and showed his regard for the admonition by keeping
Eunomius and the rest of the Arians at a distance.
The emperor then made some severe laws, forbidding all sorts of sects to hold their worship,
and requiring them to join the Catholic Church. Now this was, no doubt, a great mistake; for it is
impossible to force religious belief on people; and although Christian princes ought to support the
true faith by making laws in favour of it, it is wrong to make men pretend a belief which they do
not feel in their hearts. But Theodosius had not had the same opportunities which we have since
had of seeing how useless such laws are, and what mischief they generally do; so that, instead of
blaming him, we must give him credit for acting in the way which he believed most likely to promote
the glory of God and the good of his subjects. And, although some of his laws seem very severe,
there is reason to think that these were never acted on.
But about the same time, in another part of the empire, which had been usurped by one Maximus,
an unhappy man, named Priscillian, and some of his companions, were put to death on account of
heresy. Such things became sadly too common afterwards; but at the time the punishment of
Priscillian struck all good men with horror. St. Martin, Bishop of Tours, who was called “The
Apostle of the Gauls”, did all that he could to prevent it. St. Ambrose (of whom you will hear more
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in the next chapter; would not, on any account, have to do with the bishops who had been concerned
in it; and the chief of these bishops was afterwards turned out of his see, and died in banishment.
We may do well to remember that this first instance of punishing heresy with death, was under the
government of an usurper, who had made his way to power by rebellion and murder.
CHAPTER XV: ST. AMBROSE (AD 374–397)
The greatest bishop of the West in these times was St. Ambrose, of Milan. He was born about
the year 340, and thus was ten or twelve years younger than St. Basil and St. Gregory of Nazianzum.
His father had held a very high office under the emperors; Ambrose himself was brought up as a
lawyer, and had risen to be governor of Liguria, a large country in the north of Italy, of which Milan
was the chief city.
The bishop of Milan, who was an Arian, died in the year 374, and then a great dispute arose
between the orthodox and the Arians as to choosing a new bishop, so that it seemed as if they might
even come to blows about it. When both parties were assembled in the cathedral for the election,
the governor, Ambrose, went and made them a speech, desiring them to manage their business
peaceably, and it is said that, as soon as be had done, a little child’s voice was heard crying out
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“Ambrose bishop!” All at once, the whole assembly caught up the words, which seemed to have
something providential in them; and they insisted that the governor should be the new bishop. Now
although Ambrose had been brought up as a Christian, he was still only a catechumen, and had
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never thought of being a bishop, or a clergyman of any kind; and he was afraid to undertake so
high and holy an office. He therefore did all that he could to get himself excused. He tried to make
the people of Milan think that his temper was too severe, but they saw through his attempts. He
then escaped from the town more than once, but he was brought back. Valentinian, who was then
emperor, approved the choice of a bishop; and Ambrose was first baptized, and a few days afterwards
he was consecrated.
He now studied very hard, in order to make up for his want of preparation for his office. He
was very active in all sorts of pious and charitable works, and he soon became famous as a preacher.
His steady firmness in maintaining the orthodox faith was especially shown when Valentinian’s
widow, Justina, who was an Arian, wished to take one of the churches of Milan from the Catholics
and to give it to her own sect; and after a hard struggle, Ambrose got the better of her. He afterwards
gained a very great influence both over Justina’s son, Valentinian II, and over his elder brother
Gratian. And when Gratian had been murdered by the friends of Maximus (the same Maximus who
put Priscillian to death), and Theodosius came into the West to avenge his murder (AD 388),
Ambrose had no less power with Theodosius than he had had with the younger emperors.
Theodosius took up his abode for a time at Milan after he had defeated and slain the usurper
Mandamus. Soon after his arrival in the city, he went to service at the cathedral, and was going to
seat himself in the part of it nearest to the altar, as at Constantinople the emperor’s seat was in that
part of the church. But Ambrose stopped him, and told him that none but the clergy were allowed
to sit there; and he begged the emperor to take a place at the head of the people outside the altar-rails.
Theodosius was so far from being angry at this, that he thanked the bishop, and explained to him
how it was that he had made the mistake of going within the rails, and when he got back to
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Constantinople, he astonished his courtiers by ordering that his seat should be removed to a place
answering to that in which he had sat at Milan, for that, he said, was much more seemly and proper.
There are other stories about Ambrose’s dealings with Theodosius, but I shall mention only
one, which is the most famous of all. One day when there was to be a great chariot race at
Thessalonica, it happened that a famous charioteer, who was a favourite with the people of the
town, had been put in prison by the governor on account of a very serious crime. On this a mob
went to the governor, and demanded that the man should be set at liberty. The governor refused;
and thereupon the mob grew furious, and murdered him, with a number of his soldiers and other
persons. The emperor might have been excused for showing hearty displeasure at this outrage; but
unhappily the great fault of his character was a readiness to give way to violent fits of passion; and
on hearing what had been done, his anger knew no bounds. Ambrose, who was afraid lest some
serious mischief should follow, did all that he could to soothe the emperor, and got a promise from
him that the Thessalonians should be spared. But some other advisers afterwards got about
Theodosius, and again inflamed his mind against the offenders, so that he gave orders for a fearful
act of cruel and treacherous vengeance. The people of Thessalonica were invited in the emperor’s
name to some games in the circus or amphitheatre, which was a building open to the sky, and large
enough to hold many thousands. And when they were all gathered together in the place, instead of
the amusement which had been promised them, they were fallen on by soldiers, who for three hours
carried on a savage butchery, sparing neither old men, women, nor children, and making no
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difference between innocent and guilty, Thessalonian or stranger. Among those who had come to
see the games there was a foreign merchant, who had had no concern in the outrage of the mob,
which was punished in this frightful way. He had two sons with him, and he offered his own life,
with all that he had, if the soldiers would but spare one of them. The soldiers were willing to agree
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to this, but the poor father could not make up his mind which of the sons he should choose; and
the soldiers, who were too much enraged by their horrid work to make any allowance for his feelings,
stabbed both the youths before his eyes at the same moment. The number of persons slain in the
massacre is not certain; there were at least as many as seven thousand, and some writers say that
there were fifteen thousand.
When Ambrose heard of this shocking affair, he was filled with grief and horror, for he had
relied on the emperor’s promise to spare the Thessalonians, and great care had been taken that he
should not know anything of the orders which had been afterwards sent off. He wrote a letter to
Theodosius, exhorting him to repent, and telling him that, unless he did so, he could not be admitted
to the Holy Communion. This letter brought the emperor to feel that he had done very wrongly;
but Ambrose wished to make him feel it far more. As Theodosius was about to enter the cathedral,
the bishop met him in the porch, and, laying hold on his robe, desired him to withdraw, because
he was a man stained with innocent blood. The emperor said that he was deeply grieved for his
offence; but Ambrose told him that this was not enough—that he must show some more public
proofs of his repentance for so great a sin. The emperor withdrew accordingly to his palace, where
he shut himself up for eight months, refusing to wear his imperial robes, and spending his time in
sadness and penitence. At length, when Christmas was drawing near, he went to the bishop, and
humbly begged that he might be admitted into the Church again. Ambrose desired him to give some
substantial token of his sorrow, and the emperor agreed to make a law by which no sentence of
death should be executed until thirty days after it had been passed. This law was meant to prevent
any more such sad effects of sudden passion in princes as the massacre of Thessalonica. The emperor
was then allowed to enter the church, where he fell down on the pavement, with every appearance
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of the deepest grief and humiliation; and it is said that from that time he never spent a day without
remembering the crime into which his passion had betrayed him.
Theodosius was the last emperor who kept up the ancient glory of Rome. He is called “the
Great”, and in many respects was well deserving of the name. He died in 395, and St. Ambrose
died within two years after, on Easter eve, in the year 397.
CHAPTER XVI: THE TEMPLE OF SERAPIS (AD 391)
In the account of Constantine, it was mentioned that the emperors after their conversion did
not try to put down heathenism by force, or all at once (page 39). For the wise teachers of the
Church knew that this would not be the right way of going to work, but that it would be more likely
to make the heathens obstinate than to convert them. Thus St. Augustine (of whom we shall have
more to tell you by-and-by) says in one of his sermons—“We must first endeavour to break the
idols in their hearts. When they themselves become Christians, they will either invite us to the good
work of destroying their idols, or they will be beforehand with us in doing so. And in the mean
while, we must pray for them, not be angry with them.”
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But in course of time, as the people were more and more brought off from heathenism, and as
the belief of the Gospel worked its way more thoroughly among all classes of them, laws were sent
forth against offering sacrifices, burning incense, and the like, to the heathen gods. These laws were
by degrees made stricter and stricter, until, in the reign of Theodosius, it was forbidden to do any
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act of heathen worship. And I may now tell you what took place as to the idols of Egypt in this
reign.
It was in the year 391 that an old heathen temple at Alexandria was given up to the bishop of
the city, who wished to build a church on the spot. In digging out the foundation for the church,
some strange and disgusting things, which had been used in the heathen worship, were found; and
some of the Christians carried these about the streets by way of mocking at the religion of the
heathens. The heathen part of the inhabitants were enraged; a number of them made an uproar,
killed some Christians, and then shut themselves up in the temple of one of their gods called Serapis,
whom they believed to be the protector of Alexandria. This temple was surrounded by the houses
of the priests and other buildings; and the whole was so vast and so magnificent, that it was counted
as one of the wonders of the world.
The rioters, who had shut themselves up in the temple, used to rush out from it now and then,
killing some of the Christians who fell in their way, and carrying off others as prisoners. These
prisoners were desired to offer sacrifice; if they refused, they were cruelly tortured, and some of
them were even crucified. A report of these doings was sent to Theodosius, and he ordered that all
the temples of Alexandria should be destroyed. The governor invited the defenders of the temple
of Serapis to attend in the market-place, where the emperor’s sentence was to be read; and, on
hearing what it was, they fled in all directions, so that the soldiers, who were sent to the temple,
found nobody there to withstand them.
The idol of Serapis was of such vast size that it reached from one side of the temple to the other.
It was adorned with jewels, and was covered with plates of gold and silver; and its worshippers
believed that, if it were hurt in any way, heaven and earth would go to wreck. So when a soldier
mounted a ladder, and raised his axe against it, the heathens who stood by were in great terror, and
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even some of the Christians could not help feeling a little uneasiness as to what might follow. But
the stout soldier first made a blow which struck off one of the idol’s cheeks, and then dashed his
axe into one of his knees. Serapis, however, bore all this quietly, and the bystanders began to draw
their breath more freely. The soldier worked away manfully, and, after a while, the huge head of
the idol came crashing down, and a swarm of rats, which had long made their home in it, rushed
forth, and scampered off in all directions. Even the heathens who were in the crowd, on seeing this,
began to laugh at their god. The idol was demolished, and the pieces of it were carried into the
circus, where a bonfire was made of them; and, in examining the temple, a number of tricks by
which the priests had deceived the people were found out, so that many heathens were converted
in consequence of having thus seen the vanity of their old religion, and the falsehood of the means
by which it was kept up.
Egypt, as you perhaps know, does not depend on rain for its crops, but on the rising of the river
Nile, which floods the country at a certain season; and the heathens had long said that the Christians
were afraid to destroy the idols of Egypt, lest the gods should punish them by not allowing the
water to rise. After the destruction of Serapis, the usual time for the rising of the river came, but
there were no signs of it; and the heathens began to be in great delight, and to boast that their gods
were going to take vengeance. Some weak Christians, too, began to think that there might be some
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truth in this, and sent to ask the emperor what should be done. “Better,” he said, “that the Nile
should not rise at all, than that we should buy the fruitfulness of Egypt by idolatry!” After a while
the Nile began to swell; it soon mounted above the usual height of its flood, and the Pagans were
now in hopes that Serapis was about to avenge himself by such a deluge as would punish the
Christians for the destruction of the idol; but they were again disappointed by seeing the waters
sink down to their proper level.
The emperor’s orders were executed by the destruction of the Egyptian temples and their idols.
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But we are told that the bishop of Alexandria saved one image as a curiosity, and lest people should
afterwards deny that their forefathers had ever been so foolish as to worship such things. Some say
that this image was a figure of Jupiter, the chief of the heathen gods; others say that it was the figure
of a monkey; for even monkeys were worshipped by the Egyptians!
CHAPTER XVII: CHURCH GOVERNMENT.
By this time the Gospel had not only been firmly settled as the religion of the great Roman
empire, but had made its way into most other countries of the world then known. Here, then, we
may stop to take a view of some things connected with the Church; and it will be well, in doing so,
to remember what is wisely said by our own Church, in her thirty-fourth article, which is about
“the Traditions of the Church” (that is to say, the practices handed down in the Church) —“It is
not necessary that traditions and ceremonies be in all places one, and utterly alike; for at all times
they have been divers” (that is, they have differed in different parts of Christ’s Church), “and they
may be changed according to the diversities of countries, times, and men’s manners, so that nothing
be ordained against God’s Word.”
First, then, as to the ministers of the Church. The three orders which had been from the
beginning,—bishops, presbyters (or priests), and deacons (page 6), were considered to stand by
themselves, as the only orders necessary to a church. But early in the third century a number of
other orders were introduced, all lower than that of deacons. These were the “sub-deacons”, who
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helped the deacons in the care of the poor, and of the property belonging to the church; the “acolytes”,
who lighted the lamps, and assisted in the celebration of the sacraments; the “exorcists”, who took
charge of persons suffering from afflictions resembling the possession by devils which is spoken
of in the New Testament; the “readers”, whose business it was to read the Scriptures in church; and
the “doorkeepers”. All these were considered to belong to the clergy; just as if among ourselves
the organist, the clerk, the sexton, the singers, and the bell-ringers of a church were to be reckoned
as clergy, and were to be appointed to their offices by a religious ceremony or ordination. But these
new orders were not used everywhere, and, as has been said, the persons who were in these orders
were not considered to be clergy in the same way as those of the three higher orders which had
been ever since the days of the Apostles.
There were also, in the earliest times, women called deaconesses, such as Phoebe, who is
mentioned in the Epistle to the Romans (xvi. 1.). These deaconesses (who were often pious widows)
were employed among Christians of their own sex, for such works of mercy and instruction as were
not fit for men to do (or, at least, were supposed not to be so according to the manners of the Greeks,
and of the other ancient nations). But the order of deaconesses does not seem to have lasted long.
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All bishops, as I have said already, are of one order (page 6). But in course of time, it was found
convenient for the government of the Church, that some of them should be placed higher than
others; and the way in which this was settled was very natural. The bishops of a country found it
desirable to meet sometimes, that they might consult with each other, as we are told that the Apostles
did at Jerusalem (Acts xv); and in most countries these meetings (which were called “synods” or
“councils”) came to be regularly held once or twice a year. The chief city of each district was
naturally the place of meeting; and the bishop of this city was naturally the chairman or president
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of the assembly— just as we read that, in the council of the Apostles, St. James who was bishop
of Jerusalem, where it was held, spoke with the greatest authority, after all the rest, and that his
“sentence” was given as the judgment of the assembly. These bishops, then, got the title of
“metropolitans”, because each was bishop of the metropolis (or mother-city) of the country in which
the council was held; and thus they came to be considered higher than their brethren. And, of course,
when any messages or letters were to be sent to the churches of other countries, the metropolitan
was the person in whose name it was done.
And, as all this was the natural course of things in every country, it was also natural that the
bishops of very great cities should be considered as still higher than the ordinary metropolitans.
Thus the bishoprics of Rome, of Alexandria, and of Antioch, which were the three greatest cities
of the empire, were regarded as the chief bishoprics, and as superior to all others. Those of Rome
and Antioch were both supposed to have been founded by St. Peter, and Alexandria was believed
to have been founded by St. Mark, under the direction of St. Peter. Hence it afterwards came to be
thought that this was the cause of their greatness; and the bishops of Rome, especially, liked to
have this believed, because they could then pretend to claim some sort of especial power, which
they said that our Lord had given to St. Peter above the other Apostles, and that St. Peter had left
it to his successors. But such claims were quite unfounded, and it is clear that the real reason why
these three churches stood higher than others was that they were in the three greatest cities of the
whole empire.
But the Church of Rome had many advantages over Alexandria and Antioch, as well as over
every other. It was the greatest and the richest of all, so that it could send help to distressed Christians
in all countries. No other church of the West had an Apostle to boast of, but Rome could boast of
the two great Apostles, St. Peter and St. Paul, who had laboured in it, and had given their blood for
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the faith of the Gospel in it. Most of the western nations had received their knowledge of the Gospel
through the Roman Church, and on this account they looked up with respect to it as a mother. And
as people from all parts of the empire were continually going to Rome and returning, the Church
of the great capital kept up a constant intercourse with other churches in all quarters. Thus the
bishops of Rome were naturally much respected everywhere, and, so long as they did not take too
much upon themselves, great regard was paid to their opinion; but when they tried to interfere with
the rights of other bishops, or to lord it over other churches, they were firmly withstood, and were
desired to keep within their proper bounds, as Stephen of Rome was by St. Cyprian of Carthage
(page 29).
Another thing must be mentioned as creditable to the Roman Church, and as one which did
much to raise the power of its bishops. The heresies which we have read of all began in the East,
where the people were more sharp-witted and restless in their thoughts than those of the West. The
Romans, on the other hand, had not the turn of mind which led to these errors, but rather attended
to practical things. Hence they were disposed to hold to the faith which had come down to them
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from their fathers, and to defend it against the new opinions which were brought forward from time
to time. This steadiness, then, gave them a great advantage over the Christians of the East, who
were frequently changing from one thing to another. It gained for the Roman Church much credit
and authority, and when the great Arian controversy arose, the effects of the difference between
the Eastern and the Western character were vastly increased. The Romans (except for a short time,
when a bishop named Liberius was won over by the Arians) kept to their old faith. The Eastern
parties looked to the bishop of Rome as if he had the whole Western Church in his hands. They
constantly carried their quarrels to him, asking him to give his help, and he was the strongest friend
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that they could find anywhere. And when the side which Rome had always upheld got the victory
at last, the importance of the Roman bishops rose in consequence. But even after all this, if the
bishop of Rome tried to meddle with other churches, his right to do so was still denied. Many
“canons” (that is to say, rules of the Church) were made to forbid the carrying of any quarrel for
judgment beyond the country in which it began; and, however glad the churches of Africa and of
the East were to have the bishop of Rome for a friend, they would never allow him to assume the
airs of a master.
And from the time when Constantinople was built in the place of Byzantium, a new great Church
arose. Byzantium had been only a common bishopric, and for a time Constantinople was not called
anything more than a common bishopric; but in real importance it was very much more, so that
even a bishop of Antioch, the third see in the whole Christian world, thought himself advanced
when he was made bishop of Constantinople instead. But the second General Council (which as
we have seen (page 70) was held at Constantinople in the year 381) made a canon by which
Constantinople was placed next to Rome, “because,” as the canon said, “it is a new Rome.” This
raised the jealousy, not only of Antioch, and still more of Alexandria, at having an upstart bishopric
(as they considered it) put over their heads; but it gave great offence to the bishops of Rome, who
could not bear such a rivalry as was now threatened, and were besides very angry on account of
the reason which was given for placing Constantinople next after Rome. For the council, when it
said that Constantinople was to be second among all Churches, because of its being “ a new Rome,”
meant to say that the reason why Rome itself stood first was nothing more than its being the old
capital of the empire, whereas the bishops of Rome wished it to be thought that their power was
founded on their being the successors of St. Peter.
We shall by-and-by see something of the effects of these jealousies.
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CHAPTER XVIII: CHRISTIAN WORSHIP,
PART I
In the early days of the Gospel, while the Christians were generally poor, and when they were
obliged to meet in fear of the heathen, their worship was held in private houses and sometimes in
burial-places under-ground. But after a time buildings were expressly set apart for worship. It has
been mentioned that in the years of quiet, between the death of Valerian and the last persecution
(A D. 261–303) these churches were built much more handsomely than before, and were furnished
with gold and silver plate and other rich ornaments (page 32). And after the conversion of
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Constantine, they became still finer and costlier. The clergy then wore rich dresses at service, the
music was less simple and the ceremonies were multiplied. Some of the old heathen temples were
turned into churches, but temples were not built in a shape very suitable for Christian worship and
the pattern of the new churches was rather taken from the halls of justice, called “Basilicas”, which
were to be found in every large town. These buildings were of an oblong shape, with a broad middle
part, and on each side of it an aisle, separated from it by a row of pillars. This lower part of the
basilica was used by merchants who met to talk about their business, and by all sorts of loungers
who met to tell and hear the news. But at the upper end of the oblong there was a half circle, with
its floor raised above the level of the rest; and in the middle of this part the judge of the city sat.
Now if you will compare this description with the plan of a church, you will see that the broad
middle part of the basilica answers to what is called the “body” or “nave” of the church; that the
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side aisles are alike in each; and that the further part of the basilica, with its raised floor, answers
to the “chancel” of a church; while the holy table, or “altar”, stands in the place answering to the
judge’s seat in the basilica. Same of these halls were given up by the emperors to be turned into
churches, and the plan of them was found convenient as a pattern in the building of new churches.
On entering a church, the first part was the Porch, in which there were places for the catechumens
(that is to say, those who were preparing for baptism); for those who were supposed to be possessed
with devils, and who were under the care of the exorcists (page 81), and for the lowest kinds of
those who were undergoing penance. Beyond this porch were the “Beautiful Gates”, which opened
into the “Nave” of the church. Just within these gates were those penitents whose time of penance
was nearly ended; and the rest of the nave was the place for the “faithful”—that is to say, for those
who were admitted to all the privileges of Christians. At the upper end of the nave, a place called
the “Choir” was railed in for the singers; and then, last of all, came the raised part or “chancel”,
which has been spoken of. This was called the “Sanctuary”, and was set apart for the clergy only.
The women sat in church apart from the men; sometimes they were in the aisles, and sometimes
in galleries. Churches generally had a court in front of them or about them, in which were the
lodgings of the clergy, and a building for the administration of baptism, called the “Baptistery”.
In the early times, churches were not adorned with pictures or statues; for Christians were at
first afraid to have any ornaments of the kind, lest they should fall into idolatry like the heathen.
No such things as images or pictures of our Lord, or of His saints, were known among them; and
in their every-day life, instead of the figures of gods, with which the heathens used to adorn their
houses, their furniture, their cups, and their seals, the Christians made use of emblems only. Thus,
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instead of pretending to make a likeness of our Lord’s human form, they made a figure of a shepherd
carrying a lamb on his shoulders, to signify the Good Shepherd who gave his life for his sheep (St.
John x. 11). Other ornaments of the same kind were—a dove signifying the Holy Ghost, a ship,
signifying the Church, the ark of salvation, sailing towards heaven; a fish, which was meant to
remind them of their having been born again in the water at their baptism; a musical instrument
called a lyre, to signify Christian joy; and an anchor, the figure of Christian hope. About the year
300, the Council of Elvira, in Spain, made a canon forbidding pictures in church, which shows that
the practice had then begun, and was growing; and also that, in Spain, at least, it was thought to be
dangerous (as indeed it too surely proved to be). And a hundred years later, Epiphanius, a famous
bishop of Salamis, in the island of Cyprus, tore a curtain which he found hanging in a church, with
a figure of our Lord, or of some saint, painted on it. He declared that such things were altogether
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unlawful, and desired that the curtain might be used to bury some poor man in, promising to send
the church a plain one instead of it.
Christians used to sign themselves with the sign of the cross on many occasions, and figures
of the cross were early set up in churches. But crucifixes (which are figures of our Lord on the
cross, although ignorant people sometimes call the cross itself a crucifix) were not known until
hundreds of years after the time of which we are now speaking.
PART II
The church-service of Christians was always the same as to its main parts, although there were
little differences as to order and the like. Justin Martyr, who lived (as we have seen) about the
middle of the second century (see Chapter III), describes the service as it was in his time. It began,
he says, with readings from the Scriptures; then followed a discourse by the chief clergyman who
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was present; and there was much singing, of which a part was from the Old Testament psalms,
while a part was made up of hymns on Christian subjects. The discourses of the clergy were generally
meant to explain the Scripture lessons which had been read. At first these discourses were very
plain, and as much as possible like ordinary talk; and from this they got the name of “homilies”,
which properly meant nothing more than “conversations”. But by degrees they grew to be more
like speeches, and people used to flock to them, just as many do now, from a wish to hear something
fine, rather than with any notion of taking the preacher’s words to heart, and trying to be made
better by them. And in the fourth century, when a clergyman preached eloquently, the people used
to cheer him on by clapping their hands, waving their handkerchiefs, and shouting out, “Orthodox!”
“Thirteenth apostle!” or other such cries. Good men, of course, did not like to be treated in this
way, as if they were actors at a theatre; and we often find St. Chrysostom and St Augustine (of both
of whom you will hear by-and-by; objecting to it in their sermons, and begging their hearers not
to show their admiration in such foolish and unseemly ways. But it seems that the people went on
with it nevertheless; and no doubt there must have been some preachers who were vain enough and
silly enough to be pleased with it.
In the time of the Apostles the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper was celebrated in the evening,
as it had been by our blessed Lord Himself on the night in which He was betrayed. Thus it was,
for instance, when the disciples at Troas “came together upon the first day of the week (Sunday)
to break bread” (that is, to celebrate the Lord’s Supper), and “Paul preached unto them, and continued
his speech until midnight” (Acts xx. 7). In the service for this sacrament there was a thanksgiving
to God for His bounty in bestowing the fruits of the earth. The congregation offered gifts of bread
and wine, and from these the elements which were to be consecrated were taken. They also brought
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gifts of money, which was used for the relief of the poor, for the support of the clergy, and for other
good and religious purposes. Either before or after the sacrament, there was a meal called the
love-feast, for which all the members of the congregation brought provisions, according as they
could afford. All of them sat down to it as equals, in token of their being alike in Christ’s
Brotherhood; and it ended with psalm-singing and prayer. But even in very early days (as St. Paul
shows us in his first epistle to the Corinthians, xi. 21f), there was sad misbehaviour at these meals;
and besides this, such religious feasts gave the heathen an excuse for their stories that the Christians
met to feed on human flesh and to commit other abominations in secret (see page 7). For these
reasons, after a time, the love-feast was separated from the holy Communion, and at length it was
entirely given up.
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In the second century, the administration of the Lord’s Supper, instead of being in the evening
as at first, was added on to the morning service, and then a difference was made between the two
parts of the service. At the earlier part of it the catechumens and penitents might be present, but
when the Communion office was going to begin, a deacon called out, “Let no one of the catechumens
or of the hearers stay.” After this none were allowed to remain except those who were entitled to
communicate, which all baptized Christians did in those days, unless they were shut out from the
Church on account of their misdeeds. The “breaking of bread” in the Lord’s Supper was at first
daily, as we know from the early chapters of the Acts (ii. 46); but this practice does not seem to
have lasted beyond the time when the faith of the Christians was in its first warmth, and it became
usual to celebrate the holy Communion on the Lord’s day only. When Christianity became the
religion of the empire, and there was now no fear of persecution, the earlier part of the service was
open not only to catechumens and penitents, but to Jews and heathens; and in the fifth century,
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when the Church was mostly made up of persons who had been baptized and trained in Christianity
from infancy, the distinction between the “service of the catechumens” and the “service of the
faithful” was no longer kept up.
The length of time during which converts were obliged to be catechumens before being admitted
to baptism differed in different parts of the Church. In some places it was two years, in some three
years; but if during this time they fell sick and appeared to be in danger of death, they were baptized
without waiting any longer.
At baptism, those who received it professed their faith, or their sponsors did so for them, and
from this began the use of creeds, containing, in few words, the chief articles of the Christian faith.
The sign of the cross was made over those who were baptized “in token that they should not be
ashamed to confess the faith of Christ crucified, and manfully to fight under His banner against
sin, the world, and the devil, and to continue Christ’s faithful soldiers and servants unto their life’s
end.” The kiss of peace was given to them in token of their being taken into spiritual brotherhood;
white robes were put on them, to signify their cleansing from sin; and a mixture of milk and honey
was administered to them, as if to give them a foretaste of their heavenly inheritance, of which the
earthly Canaan, “flowing with milk and honey” (Exod. iii. 8, etc.) had been a figure. Other
ceremonies were added in the fourth century, such as the use of salt and lights, and an anointing
with oil in token of their being “made kings and priests to God” (Rev. i. 6; 1 Pet. ii. 5–9), besides
the anointing with a mixture called “chrism” at confirmation, which had been practised in earlier
times.
The usual time of baptism was the season from Easter-eve to Whitsuntide; but in case of danger,
persons might be baptized at any time.
PART III
During the fourth century there was a growth of superstitions and corruptions in the Church.
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Great numbers of converts came into it, bringing their old heathen notions with them, and not well
knowing what they might expect, but with an eager desire to find as much to interest them in the
worship and life of Christians as they had found in the ceremonies and shows of their former
religion. And in order that such converts might not be altogether disappointed, the Christian teachers
of the age allowed a number of things which soon began to have very bad effects; thus, as we are
told in the preface to our own Prayer-book, St. Augustine complained that in his time (which was
about the year 400) ceremonies “were grown to such a number that the estate of Christian people
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was in worse case concerning that matter than were the Jews.” Among the corruptions which were
now growing, although they did not come to a head until afterwards, one was an excess of reverence
for saints, which led to the practices of making addresses to them, and of paying superstitious
honours to their dead bodies. Another corruption was the improper use of paintings or images,
which even in St. Augustine’s time had gone so far that, as he owns with sorrow, many of the
ignorant were “worshippers of pictures.” Another was the fashion of going on pilgrimage to the
Holy Land, in which Constantine’s mother, Helena, set an example which was soon followed by
thousands, who not only fancied that the sight of the places hallowed by the great events of Scripture
would kindle or heighten their devotion, but that prayers would be especially pleasing to God if
they were offered up in such places. And thus great numbers flocked to Palestine from all quarters,
and even from Britain, among other countries, and on their return they carried back with them water
from the Jordan, earth from the Redeemer’s sepulchre, or what they believed to be chips of the true
cross, which was supposed to have been found during Helena’s visit to Jerusalem. The mischiefs
of this fashion soon showed themselves. St. Basil’s brother, Gregory of Nyssa, wrote a little book
expressly for the purpose of persuading people not to go on pilgrimage. He said that he himself
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had been neither better nor worse for a visit which he had paid to the Holy Land; but that such a
pilgrimage might even be dangerous for others because the inhabitants of the country were so
vicious that there was more likelihood of getting harm from them than good from the sight of the
holy places. “We should rather try,” he said, “to go out of the body than to drag it about from place
to place.” Another very learned man of the same time, St. Jerome, although he had taken up his
own abode at Bethlehem, saw so much of the evils which arose from pilgrimages that he gave very
earnest warnings against them. “It is no praise,” he says, “to have been at Jerusalem but to have
lived religiously at Jerusalem. The sight of the places where our Lord died and rose again are
profitable to those who bear their own cross and daily rise again with Him. But for those who say,
‘The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord,’ (Jerem. vii. 4), let them hear the Apostle’s words,
‘Ye are the temple of God and the Spirit of God dwelleth in you,’ (1 Cor. iii. 16) The court of
heaven is open to approach from Jerusalem and from Britain alike; ‘for the kingdom of God is
within you’” (St. Luke xvii. 21).
There were, indeed, some persons who rose up to oppose the errors of which I have been
speaking. But unhappily they mixed up the truths which they wished to teach with so many errors
of their own, and they carried on their opposition so unwisely, that, instead of doing good, they did
harm, by setting people against such truth as they taught on account of the error which was joined
with it, and of the strong way which they took of teaching it. By such opposition the growth of
superstition was not checked, but advanced and strengthened.
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CHAPTER XIX: ARCADIUS AND HONORIUS (AD 395–423)
The great emperor Theodosius was succeeded in 395 by his two sons, Arcadius, who was
eighteen years of age, and Honorius, who was only eleven. Arcadius had the East, and Honorius
the West; and after this division, the empire was never again united in anything like the full extent
of its old greatness. The reigns of these princes were full of misfortunes, especially in the western
empire, where swarms of barbarians poured down from the north, and did a vast deal of mischief.
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One of these barbarous nations, the Goths, whose king was named Alaric, thrice besieged Rome
itself. The first time, Alaric was bought off by a large sum of money. After the second siege, he
set up an emperor of his own making; and after the third siege, the city was given up to his soldiers
for plunder. Rude as these Goths were, they had been brought over to a kind of Christianity, although
it was not the true faith of the Church. There had, indeed, been Christians among the Goths nearly
150 years before this time, for many of them had been converted by Christian captives, whom they
carried off in the reigns of Valerian and Gallienus, about the year 260; and a Gothic bishop, named
Theophilus, had sat at the council of Nicaea. But great changes had since been wrought among
them by a remarkable man named Ulfilas, who was consecrated as their bishop in the year 348. He
found that they did not know the use of letters, so he made an alphabet for them, and translated the
Scriptures into their language, and he taught them many useful arts. Thus he got such an influence
over them, that they received all his words as law, and he was called “the Moses of the Goths.”
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But, unhappily, Ulfilas was drawn into Arianism, and this was the doctrine which he taught to his
people, instead of the sound faith which had before been preached to them by Theophilus and
others. But still, although their Christianity was not of the right kind, it had good effects on these
rough people; and so it appeared when Rome was given over by the conqueror Alaric to his soldiers.
Although they destroyed temples, they paid great respect to churches; and they did not commit
such terrible acts of cruelty and violence as had been usual when cities were taken by heathen
armies.
I need not say more about these sad times; but I must not forget to tell what was done by a
monk, named Telemachus, in the reign of Honorius. In the year 403, one of the emperor’s generals
defeated Alaric in the north of Italy; and the Romans, who in those days were not much used to
victories, made the most of this one, and held great games in honour of it. Now the public games
of the Romans were generally of a cruel kind. We have seen how, in former days, they used to let
wild beasts loose against the Christian martyrs in their amphitheatres (page 9); and another of their
favourite pastimes was to set men who were called gladiators (that is, swordsmen) to fight and kill
each other in those same places. The love of these shows of gladiators was so strong in the people
of Rome, that Constantine had not ventured to do away with them there, although he would not
allow any such things in the new Christian capital which he built. And the custom of setting men
to slaughter one another for the amusement of the lookers on had lasted at Rome down to the time
of Honorius.
Telemachus, then, who was an eastern monk, was greatly shocked that Christians should take
pleasure in these savage sports, and when he heard of the great games which were preparing, he
resolved to bear his witness against them. For this purpose, therefore, he went all the way to Rome,
and got into the amphitheatre, close to the arena (as the place where the gladiators fought was
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called); and when the fight had begun, he leaped over the barrier which separated him from the
arena, rushed in between the gladiators, and tried to part them. The people who crowded the vast
building grew furious at being baulked of their amusement; they shouted out with rage, and threw
stones, or whatever else they could lay their hands on, at Telemachus, so that he was soon pelted
to death. But when they saw him lying dead, their anger suddenly cooled, and they were struck
with horror at the crime of which they had been guilty, although they had never thought of the
wickedness of feasting their eyes on the bloodshed of gladiators. The emperor said that the death
of Telemachus was really a martyrdom, and proposed to do away with the shows of gladiators, and
the people, who were now filled with sorrow and shame, agreed to give up their cruel diversions.
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So the life of the brave monk was not thrown away, since it was the means of saving the lives of
many, and of preserving multitudes from the sin of sacrificing their fellowmen for their sport.
CHAPTER XX: ST. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM (AD 347–407)
PART I
At this time lived St. John Chrysostom, whose name is known to us all from the prayer in our
service which is called “A Prayer of St. Chrysostom.”
He was born at Antioch about the year 347. While he was still a little child, he lost his father;
but his mother, Anthusa, who was left a widow at the age of twenty, remained unmarried, and
devoted herself to the training of her son. During his early years, she brought him up with religious
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care, and he was afterwards sent to finish his education under a famous heathen philosopher. I have
already had occasion to tell you that Christian youths, while in the schools of such teachers, ran a
great risk of being turned from the Gospel, and that many of them fell away (p 67); but John was
preserved from the danger by daily studying the Scriptures, and thus his faith was kept fresh and
warm. The philosopher had such a high notion of his talents, that he long after spoke of John as
the best of all the pupils he had ever had, and said that he would have been the worthiest to succeed
him as a teacher, “if the Christians had not stolen him.”
When he left this master, John studied law; but, after trying it for a time, he found that there
were things about the business of an Antioch lawyer which went against his conscience; so he
resolved to give up the law, and to become a monk. But his mother thought that he might lead a
really Christian life without rushing away into the wilderness and leaving his natural duties behind
him. She took him by the hand, led him into her chamber, and made him sit down beside her on
the bed. Then she burst into tears: she reminded him of all the kindness which she had shown him,
and of the cares and troubles which she had borne for his sake. She told him that it had been her
chief comfort to look on his face, which put her in mind of the husband whom she had lost. “Make
me not once more a widow,” she said: “Wait only for my death, which may, perhaps, not be far
off. When you have laid me in the grave, then you may go where you will—even beyond the sea,
if such be your wish, but so long as I live, bear to stay with me, and do not offend God by afflicting
your mother.” The young man yielded to these entreaties, and remained in his mother’s house,
although he gave up all worldly business, and lived after the strict manner of the monks. But when
the good Anthusa was dead, he withdrew to the mountains, near Antioch, in which a great number
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of monks dwelt. There he spent four years in a monastery, and two as a hermit in a cave. But at
last his hard life made him very weak and ill, so that he was obliged to return to Antioch; and soon
after this he was ordained to be one of the clergy, and was appointed chief preacher of the city (AD
386).
Of all the great men of the ancient Church, John was the most famous for eloquence; and from
this it was that he got the name of “Chrysostom,” which means “golden-mouthed”. His sermons
(of which hundreds still remain) were not mere displays of fine words, but were always meant to
instruct and to improve those who heard them. And, while he was chief preacher at Antioch, he
had a very remarkable opportunity of using his gifts of speech. An outbreak had taken place in the
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city, on account of a new tax which Theodosius, who was then emperor, had laid on the people
(AD 387). The statues of the emperor and of his family, which stood in public places, were thrown
down, and were dragged about the streets with all sorts of mockery and insult. But the riot was
easily put down, and then the inhabitants began to be in great anxiety and terror as to the punishment
which Theodosius might inflict on them. For although the frightful massacre of Thessalonica (p
75) had not at that time taken place, they knew that the emperor was not to be trifled with, and that
his fits of anger were terrible. They expected that they might be given up to slaughter, and their
city to destruction. For a time, few of them ventured out of their houses, and those few slunk along
the streets as if they were afraid of being seized. Many were imprisoned, and were cruelly tortured
or put to death; others ran away, leaving all that they had behind them; and the public amusements,
of which the people of Antioch were excessively fond, were, for a time, quite given up.
The bishop, Flavian, who was a very aged man, in bad health and infirm, left the bedside of his
sister (who was supposed to be dying) to set out for Constantinople and implore the emperor’s
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mercy. And while he was absent Chrysostom took the lead among the clergy. He preached every
day in a solemn and awakening tone; he tried to turn the terrors of the people to their lasting good,
by directing their thoughts to the great judgment, in which all men must hereafter appear, urging
them, whatever their present fate might be, to strive after peace with God, and a share in his mercy,
through Christ, in that awful day. The effect of his preaching was wonderful;—day after day, vast
crowds flocked to listen to it, forgetting every thing else: even many heathens were among them.
The news of the disturbances at Antioch had reached Constantinople long before Flavian; and
the bishop, as he was on his way, met two commissioners, who had been sent by the emperor to
declare his sentence to the people. The buildings of the city were to be spared; but it was to lose
its rank among the cities of the empire. The baths, which in those countries were reckoned almost
as a necessary of life, were to be shut up, and all public amusements were to be at an end. The
officers, after reaching Antioch, and publishing this sentence, set about inquiring who had taken a
part in the tumult. Judgment was to be executed without mercy on all whose guilt could be proved;
and the anxiety of the people became extreme. A number of monks and hermits came down from
the mountains, and busied themselves in trying to comfort those who were in distress. One of these
monks, Macedonius, a man of rough and simple appearance, but of great note for holiness, met the
emperor’s commissioners as they were riding through the market-place, whereupon he laid hold
of one of them by the cloak, and desired them both to dismount. At first they were angry; but, on
being told who he was, they alighted and fell on their knees before him; for, in those days, monks
famous for their holiness were looked on much as if they had been prophets. And Macedonius
spoke to them in the tone of a prophet:—“Go,” he said, “say to the emperor: ‘You are a man; your
subjects too are men, made in the image of God. You are enraged on account of images of brass;
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but a living and reasonable image is of far higher worth than these. Destroy the brazen images, and
it is easy to make others; but you cannot restore a single hair of the heads of the men whom you
have put to death.’” The commissioners were much struck with the way in which Macedonius
uttered this, although they did not understand what he said (as he spoke in the Syrian language);
and when his words were explained to them in Greek, they agreed that one of them should go to
the emperor, to tell him how things were at Antioch, and to beg for further instructions.
In the mean time, Bishop Flavian had made his way to the emperor’s presence. Theodosius
received him with kindness, and spoke calmly of the favour which he had always shown to Antioch,
and of the base return which the citizens had made for it. The bishop wept bitterly when he heard
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this. He owned that his flock had deserved the worst of punishments; but, he said, no punishment
could be so severe as undeserved mercy. He told the emperor that, instead of the statues which had
been thrown down, he had now the opportunity of setting up far better monuments in the hearts of
his people, by showing them forgiveness. He urged the duty of forgiveness in all the ways that he
could think of, he drew a moving picture of the misery of the inhabitants of Antioch, which he
could not bear to see again; and he declared that, unless he gained the favour which he had come
to beg for, he would never return to his city.
Theodosius was moved almost to tears by the old man’s words. “What wonder is it,” he said,
“if I, who am but a man, should pardon my fellow men, when the Maker of the world has come on
earth, and has submitted to death, for the forgiveness of mankind?” and he pressed Flavian to return
to Antioch with all speed, for the comfort of his people. The bishop, on reaching home, found that
his sister, whom he had not hoped to see any more in this world, was recovered; and we may well
imagine that his flock were full of gratitude to him for what he had done. But he refused all thanks
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or credit on account of the success of his mission. “It was not my doing,” he said “it was God who
softened the emperor’s heart.”
PART II
When Chrysostom had been chief preacher of Antioch about twelve years, the bishopric of
Constantinople fell vacant (AD 397); and there was so much strife for it, that at length the people,
as the only way of settling the matter quietly, begged the emperor Arcadius to name a bishop for
them. Now it happened that the emperor’s favourite counsellor, Eutropius, had been at Antioch a
short time before, and had been very much struck with Chrysostom’s preaching; so he advised the
emperor to choose him. Chrysostom was appointed accordingly; and, as he was so much beloved
by the people of Antioch that they might perhaps have made a disturbance rather than part with
him, he was decoyed outside the city, and was then secretly sent off to Constantinople. Eutropius
was so worthless a man that we can hardly suppose him to have acted from quite pure motives in
this affair. Perhaps he wished to get credit with the people for making so good a choice. Perhaps,
too, he may have hoped that he might be able to do as he liked with a bishop of his own choosing.
But if he thought so, he was much disappointed; for Chrysostom behaved as a faithful and true
pastor, without any fear of man.
The new bishop’s preaching was as much admired at Constantinople as it had been at Antioch,
and he soon gained great influence among his flock. And besides attending diligently to his work
at home, he set on foot missions to some heathen nations, and also to the Goths, who, as we have
seen (p 93), were Arians. But besides the Goths at a distance, there were then a great number of
the same people at Constantinople; for the Greeks and Romans of those days were so much fallen
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away from the bravery of their forefathers, that the emperors were obliged to hire Gothic soldiers
to defend their dominions. Chrysostom, therefore, took great pains to bring over these Goths at
Constantinople to the Church. He ordained clergy of their own station for them, and set apart a
church for them. And he often went himself to this church, and preached to them in Greek, while
an interpreter repeated his words to then in their own language.
But unhappily he soon made enemies at Constantinople. For he found the church there in a very
bad state and, by trying to set things right, he gave offence to many people of various kinds, and
although he was indeed an excellent man, perhaps he did not always act with such wisdom and
such calmness of temper as might have been wished. The last bishop, Nectarius, was a man of high
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rank, who had never dreamt of being a bishop or any such thing, until at the council of Constantinople
he was suddenly chosen instead of the good Gregory (p 71). At that time Nectarius was not even
baptized; so that he had first to receive baptism, and then within a week he was consecrated as
bishop of the second church in the whole Christian world. And it proved that he was too old to
change his ways very much. He continued to live in a costly style, as he had done all his life before;
and he let the clergy go on much as they pleased, so that they generally fell into easy and luxurious
habits, and some of them were even quite scandalous in their conduct. Now Chrysostom’s ways
and notions were quite opposite to all this. He sold the rich carpets and other valuable furniture
which he found in the bishop’s palace; nay, he even sold some of the church ornaments, that he
might get money for building hospitals and for other charitable purposes. He did not care for
company, and his health was delicate; and for these reasons he always took his meals by himself,
and did not ask bishops who came to Constantinople to lodge in his palace or to dine with him, as
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Nectarius had done. This does not seem to be quite according to St Paul’s saying, that a bishop
should be “given to hospitality” (1 Tim. iii. 2); but Chrysostom thought that among the Christians
of a great city like Constantinople the strange bishops could be at no loss for entertainment, and
that his own time and money might be better spent than in entertaining them. But many of them
were very much offended, and it is said that one, Acacias, of Berrhoea, in Syria, declared in anger,
“I will cook his pot for him!”
Chrysostom’s reforms also interfered much with the habits of his clergy. He made them perform
service at night in their churches for people who were too busy to attend during the day; and many
of them were very unwilling to leave their homes at late hours and to do additional work. Some of
them, too, were envious of him because he was so famous as a preacher, and they looked eagerly
to find something in his sermons which might be turned against him. And besides all these enemies
among the clergy, he provoked many among the courtiers and the rich people of Constantinople,
by plainly attacking their vices.
Although Chrysostom had chiefly owed his bishopric to Eutropius, he was afterwards drawn
into many disputes with him. For in that age and in that country things were very different from
what they happily are among ourselves, and a person in power like Eutropius might commit great
acts of tyranny and oppression, while the poor people who suffered had no means of redress. But
many of those whom Eutropius meant to plunder or to imprison took refuge in churches, where
debtors and others were then considered to be safe, as it was not lawful to seize them in the holy
buildings. Eutropius persuaded the emperor to make a law by which this right of shelter (or
“Sanctuary”, as it was called) was taken away from churches. But soon after he himself fell into
disgrace, and in his terror he rushed to the cathedral, and laid hold of the altar for protection. Some
soldiers were sent to seize him; but Chrysostom would not let them enter; and next day, when the
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church was crowded by a multitude of people who had flocked to see what would become of
Eutropius, the bishop preached on the uncertainty of all earthly greatness. While Eutropius lay
crouching under the holy table, Chrysostom turned to him and reminded him how he had tried to
take away that very privilege of churches from which he was now seeking protection; and he desired
the people to beg both God and the emperor to pardon the fallen favourite. By all this he did not
mean to insult the wretched Eutropius, but to turn the rage of the multitude into pity. It was said,
however, by some that he had triumphed over his enemy’s misfortunes; and he also got into trouble
for giving Eutropius shelter, and was carried before the emperor to answer for doing so. But the
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bishop boldly upheld the right of the Church to protect the defenceless, and Eutropius was, for the
time, allowed to go free.
PART III
Thus there were many at Constantinople who were ready to take part against Chrysostom, if
an opportunity should offer, and it was not long before they found one.
The bishop of Alexandria at this time was a bold and bad man, named Theophilus. He was
jealous of the see of Constantinople, because the second general council had lately placed it above
his own (p 84); he disliked the bishop because he had hoped to put one of his own clergy into the
place, and had seen enough of Chrysostom at his first meeting to know that he could not make a
tool of him; and although he had been obliged by the emperor and Eutropius to consecrate
Chrysostom as bishop, it was with a very bad grace that he did so.
There were then great quarrels as to the opinions of the famous Origen, who had lived two
hundred years before (Chapter VII). Some of his opinions were really wrong, and others were very
strange, if they were not wrong too. But besides these, a number of things had been laid to his
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charge of which he seems to have been quite innocent. If Theophilus really cared at all about the
matter, he was in his heart favourable to Origen. But he found it convenient to take the opposite
side; and he cruelly, persecuted such of the Egyptian monks as were said to be touched with Origen’s
errors. The chief of these monks were four brothers, called the “long” or “tall brothers”. One of
them was that same Ammonias who cut off his ear, and was ready to cut out his tongue, rather than
be a bishop (p 65). Theophilus had made much of these brothers, and had employed two of them
in managing his accounts. But these two found out such practices of his in money-matters as quite
shocked them, and as, after this, they refused to stay with the bishop any longer, he charged them
and their brothers with Origenism (as the following of Origen’s opinions was called). They denied
that they held any of the errors which Theophilus laid to their charge; but he went with soldiers
into the desert, hunted out the brothers, destroyed their cells, burnt a number of books, and even
killed some persons. The tall brothers and some of their friends fled into the Holy Land, but their
enemy had power enough to prevent their remaining there, and they then sought a refuge at
Constantinople.
On hearing of their arrival in his city, Chrysostom inquired about them, and, finding that they
bore a good character, he treated them kindly; but he would not admit them to communion until
he knew what Theophilus had to say against them. Theophilus, however, was told that Chrysostom
had admitted them, and he wrote a furious letter to him about it. The brothers were very much
alarmed lest they should be turned away at Constantinople as they had been in the Holy Land, and
one day when the empress Eudoxia was in a church, they went to her and entreated her to get the
emperor’s leave that a council might be held to examine their case.
Theophilus was summoned to appear before this council, and give an account of his behaviour
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to the brothers; but when he got to Constantinople, he acted as if, instead of being under a charge
of misbehaviour himself, he had been called to judge the bishop of the capital. He would have
nothing to do with Chrysostom. He spent large sums of money in bribing courtiers and others to
favour his own side; and, when he thought he had made all sure, he held a meeting of six and thirty
bishops, at a place called the Oak, which lay on the Asiatic shore, opposite to Constantinople (AD
403). A number of trumpery charges were brought against Chrysostom, and, as he refused to appear
before such a meeting, which was almost entirely made up of Egyptian bishops, and had no right
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whatever to try him, they found him guilty of various offences, and, among the rest, of high treason!
The emperor and empress had been drawn into taking part against him, and he was condemned to
banishment. But on the night after he had been sent across the Bosphorus (the strait which divides
Constantinople from the Asiatic shore), the city was shaken by an earthquake. The empress in her
terror supposed this to be a judgment against the injustice which had been committed, and hastily
sent off a messenger to beg that the bishop would return. And when it was known next day that he
was on his way back, so great was the joy of his flock that the Bosphorus was covered with vessels,
carrying vast multitudes of people, who eagerly crowded to welcome him.
PART IV
Within a few months after his return, Chrysostom again got into trouble for finding fault with
some disorderly and almost heathenish rejoicings which were held around a new statue of the
empress, close to the door of his cathedral. Theophilus had returned to Egypt, and did not again
appear at Constantinople, but directed the proceedings of Chrysostom’s other enemies who were
on the spot. Another council was held, and, of course, found the bishop guilty of whatever was laid
to his charge. He did not mean to desert his flock, unless he were forced to do so; he, therefore,
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kept possession of the cathedral and of the episcopal house for some months. During this time he
was often disturbed by his enemies; nay, more than once, attempts were even made to murder him.
At last, on receiving an order from the emperor to leave his house, he saw that the time was come
when he must yield to force. His flock guarded the cathedral day and night, and would have resisted
any attempt to seize him; but he did not think it right to risk disorder and bloodshed. He, therefore
took a solemn leave of his chief friends, giving good advice and speaking words of comfort to each.
He begged them not to despair for the loss of him, but to submit to any bishop who should be chosen
by general consent to succeed him. And then, while, in order to take off the people’s attention, his
mule was held at one door of the church, as if he might be expected to come out there, he quietly
left the building by another door, and gave himself up as a prisoner, declaring that he wished his
case to be fairly tried by a council (AD 404).
He was first carried to Nicaea, where he remained nearly a month. During this time he pressed
for a fresh inquiry into his conduct, but in vain; and neither he nor his friends could obtain leave
for him to retire to some place where he might live with comfort. He was sentenced to be carried
to Cucusus, among the mountains of Taurus—a name which seemed to bode him no good, as an
earlier bishop of Constantinople, Paul, had been starved and afterwards strangled there, in the time
of the Arian troubles (AD 351).
On his way to Cucusus, he was often in danger from robbers who infested the road, and still
more from monks of the opposite party, who were furious against him. When he arrived at the
place, he found it a wretched little town, where he was frozen by cold in winter, and parched by
excessive heat in summer. Sometimes he could hardly get provisions; and when he was ill (as often
happened), he could not get proper medicines. Sometimes, too, the robbers, from the neighbouring
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country of Isauria, made plundering attacks, so that Chrysostom was obliged to leave Cucusus in
haste, and to take refuge in a castle called Arabissus.
But, although there was much to distress him in his banishment, there was also much to comfort
him. His great name, his sufferings, and his innocence were known throughout all Christian churches.
Letters of consolation and sympathy poured in on him from all quarters. The bishop of Rome
himself wrote to him as to an equal, and even the emperor of the West, Honorius, interceded for
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him, although without success. The bishop of Cucusus, and his other neighbours, treated him with
all respect and kindness, and many pilgrims made their way over the rough mountain roads to see
him, and to express their reverence for him. His friends at a distance sent him such large sums of
money that he was able to redeem captives and to support missions to the Goths and to the Persians,
and, after all, had to desire that they would not send him so much, as their gifts were more than he
could use. In truth, no part of his life was so full of honour and of influence as the three years which
he spent in exile.
At length the court became jealous of the interest which was so generally felt in Chrysostom,
and he was suddenly hurried off from Cucusus, with the intention of removing him to a still wilder
and more desolate place at the farthest border of the empire. He had to travel rapidly in the height
of summer, and the great heat renewed the ailments from which he had often suffered. At length
he became so ill that he felt his end to be near, and desired the soldiers who had the charge of him
to stop at a town called Comana. There he exchanged his mean travelling dress for the best which
he possessed; he once more received the sacrament of his Saviour’s body and blood; and, after
uttering the words “Glory be to God for all things,” with his last breath he added “Amen!”
(September 14th, 407).
Thirty years after this, Chrysostom’s body was removed to Constantinople. When the vessel
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which conveyed it was seen leaving the Asiatic shore of the Bosphorus, a multitude, far greater
than that which had hailed his first return from banishment, poured forth from Constantinople, in
shipping and boats of all kinds, which covered the narrow strait. And the emperor, Theodosius II,
son of Arcadius and Eudoxia, bent humbly over the coffin, and lamented with tears the guilt of his
parents in the persecution of the great and holy bishop.
CHAPTER XXI: ST. AUGUSTINE (AD 354–430)
PART I
The church in the north of Africa has hardly been mentioned since the time of St. Cyprian
(Chapter VIII). But we must now look towards it again, since in the days of St. Chrysostom it
produced a man who was perhaps the greatest of all the old Christian fathers—St. Augustine.
Augustine was born at Thagaste, a city of Numidia, in the year 354. His mother, Monica, was
a pious Christian, but his father, Patricius, was a heathen, and a man of no very good character.
Monica was resolved to bring up her son in the true faith: she entered him as a catechumen of the
Church when a little child, and carefully taught him as much of religious things as a child could
learn. But he was not then baptized, because (as has been mentioned already—p 39) people were
accustomed in those days to put off baptism, out of fear lest they should afterwards fall into sin,
and so should lose the blessing of the sacrament. This, as we know, was a mistake: but it was a
very common practice nevertheless.
When Augustine was a boy, he was one day suddenly taken ill, so that he seemed likely to die.
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Remembering what his mother had taught him, he begged that he might be baptized, and preparations
were made for the purpose; but all at once he began to grow better, and the baptism was put off for
the same reason as before.
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As he grew up, he gave but little promise of what he was afterwards to become. Much of his
time was spent in idleness; and through idleness he fell into bad company, and was drawn into sins
of many kinds. When he was about seventeen, his father died. The good Monica had been much
troubled by her husband’s heathenism and misconduct, and had earnestly tried to convert him from
his errors. She went about this wisely, not lecturing him or arguing with him in a way that might
have set him more against the Gospel, but trying rather to show him the beauty of Christian faith
by her own loving, gentle, and dutiful behaviour. And at length her pains were rewarded by seeing
him before his death profess himself a believer, and receive Christian baptism.
Monica was left rather badly off at her husband’s death. But a rich neighbour was kind enough
to help her in the expense of finishing her son’s education, and the young man himself now began
to show something of the great talents which God had been pleased to bestow on him. Unhappily,
however, he sank deeper and deeper in vice, and poor Monica was bitterly grieved by his ways. A
book which he happened to read led him to feel something of the shamefulness and wretchedness
of his courses; but, as it was a heathen book (although written by one of the wisest of the heathens,
Cicero), it could not show him by what means he might be able to reach to a higher life. He looked
into Scripture, in the hope of finding instruction there but he was now in that state of mind to which,
as St. Paul says (1 Cor. i. 23), the preaching of Christ sounds like “foolishness,” so that he fancied
himself to be above learning anything from a book so plain and homely as the Bible then seemed
to him, and he set out in search of some other teaching. And a very strange sort of teaching he met
with.
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About a hundred years before this time, a man named Manes appeared in Persia (AD 270), and
preached a religion which he pretended to have received from Heaven, but which was really made
up by himself, from a mixture of Christian and heathen notions. It was something like the doctrines
which had been before taught by the Gnostics, and was as wild nonsense as can well be imagined.
He taught that there were two gods—a good god of light, and a bad god of darkness. And he divided
his followers into two classes, the lower of which were called “hearers,” while the higher were
called “elect”. These elect were supposed to be very strict in their lives. They were not to eat flesh
at all;—they might not even gather the fruits of the earth, or pluck a herb with their own hands.
They were supported and were served by the hearers, and they took a very odd way of showing
their gratitude to these; for it is said that when one of the elect ate a piece of bread, he made this
speech to it:—“It was not I who reaped or ground or baked thee; may they who did so be reaped
and ground and baked in their turn!” And it was believed that the poor “hearers” would after death
become corn, and have to go through the mill and the oven, until they should have suffered enough
to clear away their offences and make them fit for the blessedness of the elect.
The Manichaeans (as the followers of Manes were called) soon found their way into Africa,
where they gained many converts; and, although laws were often made against their heresy by the
emperors, it continued to spread secretly; for they used to hide their opinions, when there was any
danger, so that persons who were really Manichaeans pretended to be Catholic Christians, and there
were some of them even among the monks and clergy of the Church.
In the humour in which Augustine now was, this strange sect took his fancy; for the Manichaeans
pretended to be wiser than any one else, and laughed at all submission to doctrines which had been
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settled by the Church. So Augustine at twenty became a Manichaean, and for nine years was one
of the hearers,—for he never got to be one of the elect, or to know much about their secrets. But
before he had been very long in the sect, he began to notice some things which shocked him in the
behaviour of the elect, who professed the greatest strictness. In short, he could not but see that their
strictness was all a pretence, and that they were really a very worthless set of men. And he found
out, too, that, besides bad conduct, there was a great deal very bad and disgusting in the opinions
of the Manichaeans, which he had not known of at first. After learning all this, he did not know
what to turn to, and he seems for a time to have believed nothing at all,—which is a wretched state
of mind indeed, and so he found it.
PART II
Augustine now set up as a teacher at Carthage, the chief city of Africa; but among the students
there he found a set of wild young men who called themselves “Eversors”—a name which meant
that they turned everything topsy-turvy; and Augustine was so much troubled by the behaviour of
these unruly lads, that he resolved to leave Carthage and go to Rome. Monica, as we may easily
suppose, had been much distressed by his wanderings, but she never ceased to pray that he might
be brought round again. One day she went to a learned bishop, who was much in the habit of arguing
with people who were in error, and begged that he would speak to her son; but the good man
understood Augustine’s case, and saw that to talk to him while he was in such a state of mind would
only make him more self-wise than he was already. “Let him alone awhile,” he said, “only pray
God for him, and he will of himself find out by reading how wrong the Manichaeans are, and how
impious their doctrine is.” And then he told her that he had himself been brought up as a Manichaean,
but that his studies had shown him the error of the sect and he had left it. Monica was not satisfied
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with this, and went on begging, even with tears, that the bishop would talk with her son. But he
said to her, “Go thy ways, and may God bless thee, for it is not possible that the child of so many
tears should perish.” And Monica took his words as if they had been a voice from Heaven, and
cherished the hope which they held out to her.
Monica was much against Augustine’s plan of removing to Rome; but he slipped away and
went on shipboard while she was praying in a chapel by the seaside, which was called after the
name of St. Cyprian. Having got to Rome, he opened a school there, as he had done at Carthage;
but he found that the Roman youth, although they were not so rough as those of Carthage, had
another very awkward habit— namely, that, after having heard a number of his lectures, they
disappeared without paying for them. While he was in distress on this account, the office of a public
teacher at Milan was offered to him, and he was very glad to take it. While at Rome, he had a bad
illness, but he did not at that time wish or ask for baptism as he had done when sick in his childhood.
The great St. Ambrose was then Bishop of Milan. Augustine had heard so much of his fame,
that he went often to hear him, out of curiosity to know whether the bishop were really as fine a
preacher as he was said to be; but by degrees, as he listened, he felt a greater and greater interest.
He found, from what Ambrose said, that the objections by which the Manichaeans had set him
against the Gospel were all mistaken; and, when Monica joined him, after he had been some time
at Milan, she had the delight of finding that he had given up the Manichaean sect, and was once
more a catechumen of the Church.
Augustine had still to fight his way through many difficulties. He had learnt that the best and
highest wisdom of the heathens could not satisfy his mind and heart; and he now turned again to
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St. Paul’s epistles, and found that Scripture was something very different from what he had supposed
it to be in the pride of his youth. He was filled with grief and shame on account of the vileness of
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his past life; and these feelings were made still stronger by the accounts which a friend gave him
of the strict and self-denying ways of Antony and other monks. One day, as he lay in the garden
of his lodging, with his mind tossed to and fro by anxious thoughts, so that he even wept in his
distress, he heard a voice, like that of a child, singing over and over, “Take up and read! take up
and read!” At first he fancied that the voice came from some child at play; but he could not think
of any childish game in which such words were used. And then he remembered how St. Antony
had been struck by the words of the Gospel which he heard in church (p 60); and it seemed to him
that the voice, wherever it might come from, was a call of the same kind to himself. So he eagerly
seized the book of St. Paul’s Epistles, which was lying by him, and, as he opened it, the first words
on which his eyes fell were these, —“Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and
drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying; but put ye on the Lord
Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof.” (Rom. xiii. 13f) And,
as he read, the words all at once sank deeply into his heart, and from that moment he felt himself
another man. As soon as he could do so without being particularly noticed, he gave up his office
of professor and went into the country, where he spent some months in the company of his mother
and other friends; and at the following Easter (AD 387), he was baptized by St. Ambrose. The good
Monica had now seen the desire of her heart fulfilled; and she soon after died in peace, as she was
on her way back to Africa, in company with her son.
Augustine, after her death, spent some time at Rome, where he wrote a book against the
Manichaeans, and then, returning to his native place Thagaste, he gave himself up for three years
to devotion and study. In those days, it was not uncommon that persons who were thought likely
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to be useful to the Church should be seized on and ordained, whether they liked it or not; and if
they were expected to make very strong objections, their mouths were even stopped by force. Now
Augustine’s fame grew so great, that he was afraid lest something of this kind should be done to
him; and he did not venture to let himself be seen in any town where the bishopric was vacant, lest
he should be obliged to become bishop against his will. He thought, however, that he was safe in
accepting an invitation to Hippo, because it was provided with a bishop named Valerius. But, as
he was one day listening to the bishop’s sermon, Valerius began to say that his church was in want
of another presbyter, whereupon the people laid hold of Augustine, and presented him to the bishop,
who ordained him without heeding his objections (AD 391). And four years later (AD 395), he was
consecrated a bishop, to assist Valerius, who died soon after.
Augustine was bishop of Hippo for five-and-thirty years, and, although there were many other
sees of greater importance in Africa, his uncommon talents, and his high character, made him the
foremost man of the African church. He was a zealous and exemplary bishop, and he wrote a great
number of valuable books of many kinds. But the most interesting of them all is one which may
be read in English, and is of no great length—namely, the “Confessions”, in which he gives an
account of the wanderings through which he had been brought into the way of truth and peace, and
humbly gives thanks to God, whose gracious providence had guarded and guided him.
PART III
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Augustine had a great many disputes with heretics and others who separated from the Church,
or tried to corrupt its doctrine. But only two of his controversies need be mentioned here. One of
these was with the Donatists, and the other was with the Pelagians.
The sect of the Donatists had arisen soon after the end of the last heathen persecution, and was
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now nearly a hundred years old. We have seen that St. Cyprian had a great deal of trouble with
people who fancied that, if a man were put to death, or underwent any other considerable suffering,
for the name of Christ, he deserved to be held in great honour, and his wishes were to be attended
to by other Christians, whatever his character and motives might have been (p 27). The same spirit
which led to this mistake continued in Africa after St Cyprian’s time; and thus, when the persecution
began there under Diocletian and Maximian (AD 303—see Chap. IX), great numbers rushed into
danger, in the hope of being put to death, and of so obtaining at once the blessedness and the glory
of martyrdom. Many of these people were weary of their lives, or in some other respect were not
of such character that they could be reckoned as true Christian martyrs. The wise fathers of the
Church always disapproved of such foolhardy doings, and would not allow people who acted in a
way so unlike our Lord and His apostle St. Paul to be considered as martyrs; and Mensurius, who
was the bishop of Carthage, stedfastly set his face against all such things.
One of the ways by which the persecutors hoped to put down the Gospel, was to get hold of all
the copies of the Scriptures, and to burn them; and they required the clergy to deliver them up. But
most of the officers who had to execute the orders of the emperors did not know a Bible from any
other book; and it is said that, when some of them came to Mensurius, and asked him to deliver up
his books, he gave them a quantity of books written by heretics, which he had collected (perhaps
with the intention of burning them himself), and that all the while he had put the Scriptures safely
out of the way, until the tyranny of the heathens should be overpast. When the persecution was at
an end, some of the party whom he had offended by setting himself against their wrong notions as
to martyrdom, brought up this matter against the bishop. They said that his account of it was false,
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that the books which he had given up were not what he said, but that he had really given up the
Scriptures; and that, even if his story were true, he had done wrong in using such deceit. They gave
the name of “traditors” (or, as we should say, “traitors,” from a Latin word meaning someone who
hands something over) to those who confessed that they had been frightened into giving up the
Scriptures; and they were for showing no mercy to any traditor, however much he night repent of
his weakness.
This severe party, then, tried to get up an opposition to Mensurius. They found, however, that
they could make nothing of it. But when he died, and then Caecilian, who had been his archdeacon
and his righthand man, was chosen bishop in his stead, these people made a great outcry, and set
up another bishop of their own against him. All sorts of people who had taken offence at Caecilian
or Mensurius thought this a fine opportunity for having their revenge; and thus a strong party was
formed. It was greatly helped by the wealth of a lady named Lucilla, whom Caecilian had reproved
for the superstitious habit of kissing a bone, which she supposed to have belonged to some martyr,
before communicating at the Lord’s table. The first bishop of the party was one Majorinus, who
had been a servant of some sort to Lucilla; and, when Majorinus was dead, they set up a second
bishop, named Donatus, after whom they were called Donatists. This Donatus was a clever and a
learned man, and lived very strictly; but he was exceedingly proud and ill-tempered, and used very
violent language against all who differed from him, and his sect copied his pride and bitterness.
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Many of them, however, while they professed to be extremely strict, neglected the plainer and
humbler duties of Christian life.
The Donatists said that every member of their sect must be a saint: whereas our Lord himself
had declared that evil members would always be mixed with the good in His Church on earth, like
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tares growing in a field of wheat, or bad fishes mixed with good ones in a net; and that the separation
of the good from the bad would not take place until the end of the world (St. Matt. xiii 24–30,
36–43, 47–50). And they said that their own sect was the only true Church of Christ, although they
had no congregations out of Africa, except one which was set up to please a rich lady in Spain, and
another at Rome. Whenever they made a convert from the Church, they baptized him afresh, as if
his former baptism were good for nothing. They pretended to work miracles, and to see visions;
and they made a very great deal of Donatus himself, so as even to pay him honours which ought
not to have been given to any child of man; for they sang hymns to him, and swore by his grey
hairs.
Shortly after Constantine got possession of Africa by his victory over Maxentius, and declared
liberty of religion to the Christians (AD 311–313, p 37), the Donatists applied to him against the
Catholics (p 44),— and it was curious that they should have been the first to call in the emperor as
judge in such a matter, because they were afterwards very violent against the notion of an earthly
sovereign’s having any right to concern himself with the management of religious affairs. Constantine
tried to settle the question by desiring some bishops to judge between the parties; and these bishops
gave judgment in favour of the Catholics. The Donatists were dissatisfied, and asked for a new
trial, whereupon Constantine gathered a council for the purpose at Arles, in France (AD 314). This
was the greatest council that had at that time been seen: there were about two hundred bishops at
it, and among them were some from Britain. Here again the decision was against the Donatists,
and they thereupon begged the emperor himself to examine their case; which he did, and once more
condemned them (AD 316). Some severe laws were then made against them; their churches were
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taken away; many of them were banished, and were deprived of all that they had; and they were
even threatened with death, although none of them suffered it during Constantine’s reign.
The emperor, after a while, saw that they were growing wilder and wilder, that punishment had
no effect on them, except to make them more unmanageable, and that they were not to be treated
as reasonable people. He then did away with the laws against them, and tried to keep them quiet
by kindness, and in the last years of his reign his hands were so full of the Arian quarrels nearer
home that he had little leisure to attend to the affairs of the Donatists.
PART IV
After the death of Constantius, Africa fell to the share of his youngest son, Constans, who sent
some officers into the country with orders to make presents to the Donatists, in the hope of thus
bringing them to join the Church. But Donatus flew out into a great fury when he heard of
this—“What has the emperor to do with the Church?” he asked; and he forbade the members of
his sect (which was what he meant by “the Church”) to touch any of the money that was offered
to them.
By this time a stranger set of wild people called “Circumcellions” had appeared among the
Donatists. They got their name trom two Latin words which mean “around the cottages”; because,
instead of maintaining themselves by honest labour, they used to go about, like sturdy beggars, to
the cottages of the country people, and demand whatever they wanted. They were of the poorest
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class, and very ignorant, but full of zeal for their religion. But, instead of being “pure and peaceable”,
(St. James iii. 17), this religion was fierce and savage and allowed them to go on without any check,
in drunkenness and all sorts of misconduct. Their women, whom they called “sacred virgins,” were
as bad as the men, or worse. Bands of both sexes used to rove about the country, and keep the
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peaceable inhabitants in constant fear. As they went along, they sang or shouted “Praises be to
God!” and this song, says St. Augustine, was heard with greater dread than the roaring of a lion.
At first they thought that they must not use swords, on account of what our Lord had said to Peter
(St. Matt. xxvi. 52.); so they carried heavy clubs, which they called “Israels”, and with these they
used to beat people, and often so severely as to kill them. But afterwards the Circumcellions got
over their scruples, and armed themselves not only with swords, but with other weapons of steel,
such as spears and hatchets. They attacked and plundered the churches of the Catholics, and the
houses of the clergy; and they handled any clergyman whom they could get hold of very roughly.
Besides this, they were fond of interfering in all sorts of affairs. People did not dare to ask for the
payment of debts, or to reprove their slaves for misbehaviour, lest the Circumcellions should be
called in upon them. And things got to such a pass, that the officers of the law were afraid to do
their duty.
But the Circumcellions were as furious against themselves as against others. They used to court
death in all manner of ways. Sometimes they stopped travellers on the roads, and desired to be
killed, threatening to kill the travellers if they refused. And if they met a judge going on his rounds,
they threatened him with death if he would not hand them over to his officers for execution. One
judge whom they assailed in this way played them a pleasant trick. He seemed quite willing to
humour them, and told his officers to bind them as if for execution; and when he had thus made
them harmless and helpless, instead of ordering them to be put to death, he turned them loose,
leaving them to get themselves unbound as best they could. Many Circumcellions drowned
themselves, rushed into fire, or threw themselves from rocks and were dashed to pieces; but they
would not put an end to themselves by hanging, because that was the death of the “traditor” (or
“traitor”) Judas. The Donatists were not all so mad as these people, and some of their councils
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condemned the practice of self-murder. But it went on nevertheless, and those who made away
with themselves, or got others to kill them in such ways as have been mentioned, were honoured
as martyrs by the more violent part of the sect.
Constans made three attempts to win over the Donatists by presents, but they held out against
all; and when the third attempt was made, in the year 347, by means of an officer named Macarius,
the Circumcellions broke out into rebellion, and fought a battle with the emperor’s troops. In this
battle the Donatists were defeated, and two of their bishops, who had been busy in stirring up the
rebels, were among the slain. Macarius then required the Donatists to join the Church, and threatened
them with banishment if they should refuse, but they were still obstinate: and it would seem that
they were treated hardly by the government, although the Catholic bishops tried to prevent it.
Donatus himself and great numbers of his followers were sent into banishment; and for a time the
sect appeared to have been put down.
PART V
Thus they remained until the death of the emperor Constantius (AD 361), and Donatus had died
in the mean time. Julian, on succeeding to the empire, gave leave to all whom Constantius had
banished on account of religion to return to their homes (p 56). But the Donatists were not the better
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for this, as they had not been banished by Constantius, but by Constans, before Constantius got
possession of Africa: so they petitioned the emperor that they might be recalled from banishment;
and in their petition they spoke of Julian in a way which disagreed strangely with their general
defiance of governments, and which was especially ill-suited for one who had forsaken the Christian
faith and was persecuting it at that very time. Julian granted their request, and forthwith they returned
home in great triumph, and committed violent outrages against the Catholics. They took possession
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of a number of churches, and, professing to consider everything that had been used by the Catholics
unclean, they washed the pavement, scraped the walls, burnt the communion tables, melted the
plate, and cast the holy sacrament to the dogs. They soon became strong throughout the whole north
of Africa, and in one part of it, Numidia, they were stronger than the Catholics. After the death of
Julian, laws were made against them from time to time, but do not seem to have been carried out.
And although the Donatists quarrelled much among themselves, and split up into a number of
parties, they were still very powerful in Augustine’s day. In his own city of Hippo he found that
they were more in number than the Catholics; and such was their bitter and pharisaical spirit that
the bishop of the sect at Hippo would not let any of his people so much as bake for their Catholic
neighbours.
Augustine did all that he could to make something of the Donatists, but it was mostly in vain.
He could not get their bishops or clergy to argue with him. They pretended to call themselves “the
children of the martyrs” on account of the troubles which their forefathers had gone through in the
reign of Constans, and they said that the children of the martyrs could not stoop to argue with
sinners and traditors. Although they professed that their sect was made up of perfect saints, they
took in all sorts of worthless converts for the sake of swelling their numbers, whereas Augustine
would not let any Donatists join the Church without inquiring into their characters, and, if he found
that they had done anything for which they had been condemned by their sect to do penance, he
insisted that they should go through a penance before being admitted into the Church.
But, notwithstanding the difficulties which he found in dealing with them, he and others
succeeded in drawing over a great number of Donatists to the Church. And this made the
Circumcellions so furious that they fell on the Catholic clergy whenever they could find them, and
tried to do them all possible mischief. They beat and mangled some of them cruelly; they put out
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the eyes of some by throwing a mixture of lime and vinegar into their faces; and, among other
things, they laid a plan for waylaying Augustine himself, which, however, he escaped, through the
providence of God. Many reports of these savage doings were carried to the emperor, Honorius,
and some of the sufferers appeared at his court to tell their own tale: whereupon the old laws against
the sect were revived, and severe new laws were also made. In these even death was threatened
against Donatists who should molest the Catholics; but Augustine begged that this penalty might
be withdrawn, because the Catholic clergy, who knew more about the sect than any one else, would
not give information against it, if the punishment of the Donatists were to be so great. And he and
his brethren requested that the emperor would appoint a meeting to be held between the parties, in
order that they might talk over their differences, and, if possible, might come to some agreement.
The emperor consented to do so; and a meeting took place accordingly, at Carthage, in 411, in
the presence of a commissioner named Marcellinus. Two hundred and eighty-six Catholic bishops
found their way to the city by degrees. But the Donatists, who were two hundred and seventy-nine
in number, entered it in a body, thinking to make all the effect that they could by the show of a
great procession. At the conference (or meeting), which lasted three days, the Donatists behaved
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with their usual pride and insolence. When Marcellinus begged them to sit down, they refused,
because our Lord had stood before Pilate. On being again asked to seat themselves, they quoted a
text from the Psalms, “I will not sit with the wicked” (Ps. xxvi. 5); meaning that the Catholics were
the wicked, and that they themselves were too good to sit in such company. And when Augustine
called them “brethren,” they cried out in anger that they did not own any such brotherhood. They
tried to throw difficulties in the way of arguing the question fairly; but on the third day their shifts
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would serve them no longer. Augustine then took the lead among the Catholics, and showed at
great length both how wrongly the Donatists had behaved in the beginning of their separation from
the Church, and how contrary to Scripture their principles were.
Marcellinus, who had been sent by the emperor to hear both parties, gave judgment in favour
of the Catholics. Such of the Donatist bishops and clergy as would join the Church were allowed
to keep possession of their places; but the others were to be banished. Augustine had at first been
against the idea of trying to force people in matters of religion. But he saw that many were brought
by these laws to join the Church, and after a time he came to think that such laws were good and
useful; nay, he even tried to find a Scripture warrant for them in the text, “Compel them to come
in” (St. Luke xiv. 23). And thus, unhappily, this great and good man was led to lend his name to
the grievous error of thinking that force, or even persecution, may be used rightly, and with good
effect, in matters of religion. It was one of the mistakes to which people are liable when they form
their opinions without having the opportunity of seeing how things work in the long run, and on a
large scale. We must regret that Augustine seemed in any way to countenance such means; but
even although he erred in some measure as to this, we may be sure that he would have abhorred
the cruelties which have since been done under pretence of maintaining the true religion, and of
bringing people to embrace it.
While some of the Donatists were thus brought over to the Church, others became more
outrageous than ever. Many of them grew desperate, and made away with themselves. One of their
bishops threatened that, if he were required by force to join the Catholics, he should shut himself
up in a church with his people, and that they would then set the building on fire and perish in the
flames. There were many among the Donatists who would have been mad enough to do a thing of
this kind; but it would seem that the bishop was not put to the trial which he expected.
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The Donatists dwindled away from this time, and were little heard of after Augustine’s days,
although there were still some in Africa two hundred years later, as we learn from the letters of St
Gregory the Great.
PART VI
Of all the disputes in which Augustine was engaged, that with the Pelagians was the most
famous. The leader of these people, Pelagius, was a Briton. His name would mean, either in Latin
or in Greek, a “man of the sea,” and it is said that his British name was Morgan— meaning the
same as the Greek or Latin name. Pelagius was the first native of our own island who gained fame
as a writer or as a divine; but his fame was not of a desirable kind, as it arose from the errors which
he ran into. He was a man of learning, and of strict life; and at Rome, where he spent many years,
he was much respected, until in his old age he began to set forth opinions which brought him into
the repute of a heretic. At Rome he became acquainted with a man named Celestius, who is said
by some to have been an Italian, while others suppose him an Irishman. It is not known whether
Celestius learnt his opinions from Pelagius, or whether each of them had come to think in the same
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way before they knew one another. But, however this may be, they became great friends, and joined
in teaching the same errors.
Augustine, as we have seen, had passed through such trials of the spirit that he thoroughly felt
the need of God’s gracious help in order to do, or even to will, any good thing. Pelagius, on the
contrary, seems to have always gone on steadily in the way of his religion. Now this was really a
reason why he should have thanked that grace and mercy of God which had spared him the dangers
and the terrible sufferings which others have to bear in the course of their spiritual life. But unhappily
Pelagius overlooked the help of grace. He owned, indeed, that all is from God; but, instead of
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understanding that the power of doing any good, or of avoiding any sin, is the especial gift of the
Holy Spirit, he fancied that the power of living without sin was given to us by God as a part of our
nature. He saw that some people make a wrong use of the doctrine of our natural corruption. He
saw that, instead of throwing the blame of their sins on their own neglect of the grace which is
offered to us through Christ, they spoke of the weakness and corruption of their nature as if these
were an excuse for their sins. This was, indeed, a grievous error, and one which Pelagius would
have done well to warn people against. But, in condemning it, he went far wrong in an opposite
way: he said that man’s nature is not corrupt; that it is nothing the worse for the fall of our first
parents; that man can be good by his own natural power, without needing any higher help; that men
might live without sin, and that many have so lived. These notions of his are mentioned and are
condemned in the ninth Article of our own Church, where it is said that “Original sin standeth not
in the following of Adam, as the Pelagians do vainly talk” [that is to say, original sin is not merely
the actual imitation of Adam’s sin]; “but it is the fault and corruption of the nature of every man
that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam; whereby man is very far gone from original
righteousness” [that is, he is very far gone from that righteousness which Adam had at the first].
And then it is said in the next Article—“The condition of man, after the fall of Adam, is such that
he cannot turn and prepare himself by his own natural strength and good works to faith and calling
upon God. Wherefore we have no power to do good works, pleasing and acceptable to God, without
the grace of God by Christ preventing us [or “going before” us], that we may have a good will, and
working with us when we have that good will.” Thus at every step there is a need of grace from
above to help us on the way of salvation.
After Rome had been taken by the Goths, in the year 410 (p 93), Pelagius and Celestius passed
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over into Africa, from which Pelagius, after a short stay, went into the Holy Land. Celestius tried
to get himself ordained by the African church; but objections were made to him, and a council was
held which condemned and excommunicated him. Augustine was too busy with the Donatists to
attend this council; but he was very much alarmed by the errors of the new teachers, and soon took
the lead in writing against them, and in opposing them by other means.
Pelagius was examined by some councils in the Holy Land, and contrived to persuade them
that there was nothing wrong in his doctrines. He and Celestius even got a bishop of Rome, Zosimus,
to own them as sound in the faith, and to reprove the African bishops for condemning them. The
secret of this was, that Pelagius used words in a crafty way, which neither the synods in the Holy
Land nor the bishop of Rome suspected. When be was charged with denying the need of grace, he
said that he owned it to be necessary; but, instead of using the word grace in its right meaning, to
signify the working of the Holy Spirit on the heart, he used it as a name for other means by which
God helps us; such as the power which Pelagius supposed to be bestowed on us as a part of our
nature; the forgiveness of our sins in baptism; the offer of salvation, the knowledge and instruction
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given to us through Holy Scripture, or in other ways. By such tricks the Pelagians imposed on the
bishop of Rome and others; but the Africans, with Augustine at their head, stood firm. They steadily
maintained that Pelagius and Celestius were unsound in their opinions; they told Zosimus that he
had no right to meddle with Africa, and that he had been altogether deceived by the heretics. So,
after a while, the bishop of Rome took quite the opposite line, and condemned Pelagius with his
followers; and they were also condemned in several councils, of which the most famous was the
General Council of Ephesus, held in the year 431. Augustine did great service in opposing these
dangerous doctrines; but in doing so, he said some things as to God’s choosing of his elect, and
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predestinating them (or “marking them out beforehand”) to salvation, which are rather startling,
and might lead to serious error. But as to this deep and difficult subject, I shall content myself with
quoting a few words from our Church’s seventeenth Article—“We must receive God’s promises
in such wise as they be generally set forth to us in Holy Scripture; and in our doings, that will of
God is to be followed, which we have expressly declared to us in the word of God.”
PART VII
Augustine was still busied in the Pelagian controversy when a fearful calamity burst upon his
country. The commander of the troops in Africa, Boniface, had been an intimate friend of his, and
had been much under his influence. A rival of Boniface, Aetius, persuaded the empress, Placidia,
who governed in the name of her young son, Valentinian the Third, to recall the general from Africa;
and at the same time he persuaded Boniface to disobey her orders, telling him that his ruin was
intended. Boniface, who was a man of open and generous mind, did not suspect the villainy of
Aetius; and, as the only means of saving himself, he rebelled against the emperor, and invited the
Vandals from Spain to invade Africa. These Vandals were a savage nation, which had overrun part
of Spain about twenty years before. They now gladly accepted Boniface’s invitation, and passed
in great numbers into Africa, where the Moors joined them, and the Donatists eagerly seized the
opportunity of avenging themselves on the Catholics, by assisting the invaders. The country was
laid waste, and the Catholic clergy were treated with especial cruelty, both by the Vandals (who
were Arians) and by the Donatists.
Augustine had urged Boniface to return to his duty as a subject of the empire. Boniface, who
was disgusted by the savage doings of the Vandals, and had discovered the tricks by which Aetius
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had tempted him to revolt, begged the Vandal leader Genseric to return to Spain; but he found that
he had rashly raised a power which he could not manage, and the barbarians laughed at his entreaties.
As he could not prevail with them by words, he fought a battle with them; but he was defeated, and
he then shut himself up in Augustine’s city, Hippo.
During all these troubles Augustine was very active in writing letters of exhortation to his
brethren, and in endeavouring to support them under their trials. And when Hippo was crowded
by a multitude of all kinds, who had fled to its walls for shelter, he laboured without ceasing among
them. In June, 430, the Vandals laid siege to the place, and soon after, the bishop fell sick in
consequence of his labours. He felt that his end was near, and he wished, during his short remaining
time, to be free from interruption in preparing for death. He therefore would not allow his friends
to see him, except at the hours when he took food or medicine. He desired that the penitential
psalms—(the seven Psalms which are read in church on Ash Wednesday, and which especially
express sorrow for sin)— should be hung up within his sight, and he read them over and over,
shedding floods of tears as he read. On the 28th of August, 430, he was taken to his rest, and in the
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following year Hippo fell into the hands of the Vandals, who thus became masters of the whole of
northern Africa.
CHAPTER XXII: COUNCILS OF EPHESUS AND CHALCEDON (AD 431–451)
Augustine died just as a great council was about to be held in the East. In preparing for this
council, a compliment was paid to him which was not paid to any other person; for, whereas it was
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usual to invite the chief bishop only of each province to such meetings, and to leave him to choose
which of his brethren should accompany him, a special invitation was sent to Augustine, although
he was not even a metropolitan (p 82), but only bishop of a small town. This shows what fame he
had gained, and in what respect his name was held, even in the Eastern Church.
The object of calling the council was to inquire into the opinions of Nestorius, bishop of
Constantinople. It would have been well for it if it had enjoyed the benefit of the great and good
Augustine’s presence; for its proceedings were carried on in such a way that it is not pleasant to
read of them But, whatever may have been the faults of those who were active in the council it laid
down clearly the truth which Nestorius was charged with denying—that (as is said in the Athanasian
creed) our blessed Lord, “although He be God and man, yet is He not two, but one Christ;” and
this council which was held at Ephesus in the year 431, is reckoned as the third general council.
Some years after it, a disturbance arose about a monk of Constantinople, named Eutyches, who
had been very zealous against Nestorius, and now ran into errors of an opposite kind. Another
council was held at Ephesus in 449; but Dioscorus, bishop of Alexandria, and a number of disorderly
monks who were favourable to Eutyches, behaved in such a furious manner at this assembly, that,
instead of being considered as a general council, it is known by the name “Latrocinium,” which
means a meeting of robbers. But two years later, when a new emperor had succeeded to the
government of the East, another general council was held at Chalcedon (pronounced kal-SEE-don)
(AD 451); and there the doctrines of Eutyches were condemned, and Dioscotus was deprived of
his bishopric. This council, which was the fourth of the general councils, was attended by six
hundred and thirty bishops. It laid down the doctrine that our Lord is “One, not by conversion [or
turning] of the Godhead into flesh, but by taking of the manhood into God: One altogether, not by
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confusion of substance, but by unity of person; for, as the reasonable soul and flesh is one man, so
God and man is one Christ.”
According, then, to these two councils, which were held against Nestorius and Eutyches, we
are to believe that our blessed Lord is really God and really man. The Godhead and the manhood
are not mixed together in Him, so as to make something which would be neither the one nor the
other (which is what the creed means by “confusion of substance”); but they are in Him distinct
from each other, just as the soul and the body are distinct in man, and yet they are not two persons,
but are joined together in one Person, just as the soul and the body are joined in one man. All this
may perhaps be rather hard for young readers to understand, but the third and fourth general councils
are too important to be passed over, even in a little book like this; and, even if what has been said
here should not be quite understood, it will at least show that all those distinctions in the Athanasian
creed mean something, and that they were not set forth without some reason, but in order to meet
errors which had actually been taught.
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I may mention here two other things which were settled by the Council of Chalcedon—that it
gave the bishops of Constantinople authority over Thrace, Asia, and Pontus; and that it raised
Jerusalem, which until then had been only an ordinary bishopric, to have authority of the same kind
over the Holy Land. These chief bishops are now called “patriarchs”, and there were thus five
patriarchs—namely, the bishops of Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem.
The map will show you how these patriarchates were divided, but there were still some Christian
countries which did not belong to any of them.
Having thus mentioned the title of patriarchs, I may explain here the use of another title which
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we hear much oftener—I mean the title of “pope”. The proper meaning of it is “father”; in short,
it is nothing else than the word “papa,” which children among ourselves use in speaking to their
fathers. This title of pope (or father), then, was at first given to all bishops; but, by degrees, it came
to be confined in its use; so that, in the East, only the bishops of Rome and Alexandria were called
by it, while in the West it was given to the bishop or patriarch of Rome alone.
CHAPTER XXIII: FALL OF THE WESTERN EMPIRE (AD 451–476)
The empire of the West was now fast sinking. One weak prince was at the head of it after
another, and the spirit of the old Romans, who had conquered the world, had quite died out. Immense
hosts of barbarous nations poured in from the North. The Goths, under Alaric, who took Rome by
siege, in the reign of Honorius, have been already mentioned (p 93). Forty years later, Attila, king
of the Huns, who was called “The scourge of God,” kept both the East and the West in terror. In
the year 451, he advanced as far as Orleans, and, after having for some time besieged it, he made
a breach in the wall of the city. The soldiers of the garrison, and such of the citizens as could fight,
had done their best in the defence of the walls; those who could not bear arms betook themselves
to the churches, and were occupied in anxious prayer. The bishop, Anianus, had before earnestly
begged that troops might be sent to the relief of the place; and he had posted a man on a tower,
with orders to look out in the direction from which succour might be hoped for. The watchman
twice returned to the bishop without any tidings of comfort; but the third time he said that he had
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noticed a little cloud of dust as far off as he could see. “It is the aid of God!” said the bishop and
the people who heard him took up the words, and shouted, “It is the aid of God!” The little cloud,
from being “like a man’s hand” (1 Kings xviii. 44), grew larger and drew nearer; the dust was
cleared away by the wind, and the glitter of spears and armour was seen; and just as the Huns had
broken through the wall, and were rushing into the city, greedy of plunder and bloodshed, an army
of Romans and allies arrived and forced them to retreat. After having been thus driven from Orleans,
Attila was defeated in a great battle near Chalons, on the river Marne, and withdrew into Germany.
In the following year (452), Attila invaded Italy, where he caused great consternation. But when
the bishop of Rome, Leo the Great, went to his camp near Mantua, and entreated him to spare the
country, Attila was so much struck by the bishop’s venerable appearance and his powerful words,
that he agreed to withdraw on receiving a large sum of money. A few months later he suddenly
died, and his kingdom soon fell to pieces
By degrees, the Romans lost Britain, Gaul, Spain, and Africa; and Italy was all that was left of
the western empire.
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Genseric, who, as has been mentioned (p 127), had led the Vandals into Africa, long kept the
Mediterranean in constant dread of his fleets. Three years after the invasion of Italy by Attila, he
appeared at the mouth of the Tiber (AD 455), having been invited by the empress Eudoxia, who
wished to be revenged on her husband, in consequence of his having told her that he had been the
cause of her former husband’s death. As the Vandals approached the walls of Rome, the bishop,
Leo, went forth at the head at his clergy. He pleaded with Genseric as he had before pleaded with
Attila, and he brought him to promise that the city should not be burnt, and that the lives of the
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inhabitants should be spared, but Genseric gave up the place for fourteen days to plunder, and the
sufferings of the people were frightful. The Vandal king returned to Africa with a vast quantity of
booty, and with a great number of captives, among whom were the unfortunate empress and her
two daughters. On this occasion the bishop of Carthage, Deogratias, behaved with noble charity;—he
sold the gold and silver plate of the church, and with the price he redeemed some of the captives,
and relieved the sufferings of others. Two of the churches were turned into hospitals. The sick were
comfortably lodged, and were plentifully supplied with food and medicines; and the good bishop,
old and infirm as he was, visited them often, by night as well as by day, and spoke words of kindness
and of Christian consolation to them.
This behaviour of Deogratias was the more to his honour, because his own flock was suffering
severely from the oppression of the Vandals, who, as we have already seen (p 127), were Arians.
Genseric treated the Catholics of Africa very tyrannically, his son and successor, Hunneric, was
still more cruel to them; and, as long as the Vandals held possession of Africa, the persecution, in
one shape or another, was carried on almost without ceasing.
The last emperor of the West, Augustulus, was put down in the year 476, and a barbarian prince
named Odoacer became king of Italy.
CHAPTER XXIV: CONVERSION OF THE BARBARIANS; CHRISTIANITY IN BRITAIN.
As the old empire of Rome disappears, the modern kingdoms of Europe begin to come to view;
and we may now look at the progress of the Gospel among the nations of the West.
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The barbarians who got possession of France, Spain, South Germany, and other parts of the
empire, were soon converted to a sort of Christianity; but, unfortunately, it was not the true Catholic
faith. I have told you (p 93) that Ulfilas, “the Moses of the Goths,” led his people into the errors of
Arianism. As it was from the Goths that the missionaries generally went forth to convert the other
northern nations, these nations, too, for the most part, became Arians; while some of them, after
having been converted by Catholics, afterwards fell into Arianism. It is curious to observe how
opposite the course of conversion was among these nations from what it had been in earlier times.
In the Roman empire, the Gospel worked its way up from the poor and simple people who were
the first to believe it, until the emperor himself became at length a convert. But among the nations
which now overran the western empire, the missionaries usually began by making a convert of the
prince; when the prince was converted, his subjects followed him to the font, and if he changed
from Catholicism to Arianism, or from Arianism to Catholicism, the people did the same. In the
course of time, all the nations which had professed Arianism were brought over to the true faith.
The last who held out were the Goths in Spain, who gave up their errors at a great council which
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was held at Toledo in 589; and the Lombards, in the north of Italy, who were converted in the early
part of the following century.
Our own island was little troubled by Arianism, and St. Athanasius bears witness to the firmness
of the British bishops in the right faith. But Pelagius, as we have seen (p 124), was himself a Briton;
and, although he did not himself try to spread his errors here, one of his followers, named Agricola,
brought them into Britain, and did a great deal of mischief (AD 429). The Britons had been long
under the power of the Romans; but, as the empire grew weaker, the Romans found that they could
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not afford to keep up an army here; and they had given up Britain in the year 409. But after this,
when the Picts and Scots of the north invaded the southern part of the island (or what we now call
England), the Britons in their alarm used to beg the assistance of the Romans against them. And it
would seem as if the British clergy had come to depend on the help of others in much the same
way; for when they found what havoc the Pelagian Agricola was making among their people, they
sent over into Gaul, and begged that the bishops of that country would send them aid against him.
Two bishops, German of Auxerre, and Lupus of Troyes, were sent accordingly by a council to
which the petition of the Britons had been made. These two could speak a language which was
near enough to the British to be understood by the Britons, it was something like the Welsh, or the
Irish, or like the Gaelic, which is spoken in the Highlands of Scotland (for all these languages are
much alike). Their preaching, had a great effect on the people, and their holy lives preached still
better than their sermons; they disputed with the Pelagian teachers at Verulam, the town where St.
Alban was martyred (p 37), and which now takes its name from him, and they succeeded for the
time in putting down the heresy.
It is said that while German and Lupus were in this country, the Picts and Saxons joined in
invading it; and that the Britons, finding their army unfit to fight the enemy, sent to beg the assistance
of the two Gaulish bishops. So German and Lupus went to the British army, and joined it just before
Easter. A great number of the soldiers were baptized at Easter, and German put himself at their
heads. The enemy came on, expecting an easy victory, but the bishops thrice shouted “Hallelujah!”
and all the army took up the shout, which was echoed from the mountains again and again, so that
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the pagans were struck with terror, and expected the mountains to fall on them. They threw down
their arms, and ran away, leaving a great quantity of spoil behind them, and many of them rushed
into a river, where they were drowned. The place where this victory is said to have been gained is
still pointed out in Flintshire, and is known by a Welsh name, which means, “German’s Field.”
Pelagianism began to revive in Britain some years later, but St. German came over a second time,
and once more put it down.
But soon after this, the Saxons came into Britain. It is supposed that Hengist and Horsa landed
in Kent in the year 449; and other chiefs followed, with their fierce heathen warriors. There was a
struggle between these and the Britons, which lasted a hundred years, until at length the invaders
got the better, and the land was once more overspread by heathenism, except where the Britons
kept up their Christianity in the mountainous districts of the West,—Cumberland, Wales, and
Cornwall. You shall hear by-and-by how the Gospel was introduced among the Saxons.
CHAPTER XXV: SCOTLAND AND IRELAND
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The only thing which seems to be settled as to the religious history of Scotland in these times,
is that a bishop named Ninian preached among the Southern Picts between the years 412 and 432,
and established a see at Whithorn, in Galloway. But in the Year of St. Ninian’s death, a far more
famous missionary, St. Patrick, who is called “the Apostle of Ireland,” began his labours in that
island.
It is a question whether Patrick was born in Scotland, at a place called Kirkpatrick, near the
river Clyde, or in France, near Boulogne. But wherever it may have been, his birth took place about
the year 387. His father was a deacon of the church, his grandfather was a presbyter, and thus
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Patrick had the opportunities of a religious training from his infancy. He did not, however, use
these opportunities so well as he might have done; but it pleased God to bring him to a better mind
by the way of affliction.
When Patrick was about sixteen years old, he was carried off by some pirates (or sea-robbers),
and was sold to a heathen prince in Ireland, where he was set to keep cattle, and had to bear great
hardships. But “there,” says he, “it was that the Lord brought me to a sense of the unbelief of my
heart, that I might call my sins to remembrance, and turn with all my heart to the Lord, who regarded
my low estate, and, taking pity on my youth and ignorance, watched over me before I knew Him
or had sense to discern between good and evil, and counselled me and comforted me as a father
doth a son. I was employed every day in feeding cattle, and often in the day I used to betake myself
to prayer; and the love of God thus grew stronger and stronger, and His faith and fear increased in
me, so that in a single day I could utter as many as a hundred prayers, and in the night almost as
many, and I used to remain in the woods and on the mountains, and would rise for prayer before
daylight, in the midst of snow and ice and rain, and I felt no harm from it, nor was I ever unwilling,
because my heart was hot within me. I was not from my childhood a believer in the only God, but
continued in death and in unbelief until I was severely chastened; and in truth I have been humbled
by hunger and nakedness, and it was my lot to go about in Ireland every day sore against my will,
until I was almost worn out. But this proved rather a blessing to me, because by means of it I have
been corrected of the Lord, and He has fitted me for being what it once seemed unlikely that I
should be, so that I should concern myself about the salvation of others, whereas I used to have no
such thoughts even for myself.”
After six years of captivity, Patrick was restored to his own country. It is said that he then
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travelled a great deal; and he became a presbyter of the Church. He was carried off captive a second
time, but this captivity did not last long, and he afterwards lived with his parents, who begged him
never to leave them again. But he thought that in a vision or dream he saw a man inviting him to
Ireland, as St Paul saw in the night a man of Macedonia, saying to him, “come over into Macedonia
and help us” (Acts xvi. 9). And Patrick was resolved to preach the Gospel in the land where he had
been a captive in his youth. His friends got about him, and entreated him not to cast himself among
the savage and heathen Irish. One of them, who was most familiar with him, when there seemed
no hope of shaking his purpose, went so far as to tell of some sin which Patrick had committed in
his boyhood, thirty years before. It was hoped that when this sin of his early days was known
(whatever it may have been) it would prevent his being consecrated as a bishop. But Patrick broke
through all difficulties, and was consecrated bishop of the Irish in the year 432.
There had already been some Christians in that country, and a missionary named Palladius had
lately attempted to labour there, but had allowed himself to be soon discouraged, and had withdrawn.
But Patrick had more zeal and patience than Palladius, and gave up all the remainder of his life to
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the Irish, so that he would not even allow himself the pleasure of paying a visit to his native country.
He was often in great danger, both from the priests of the old Irish heathenism, and from the
barbarous princes who were under their influences. But he carried on his work faithfully, and had
the comfort of seeing it crowned with abundant success. His death took place on the 17th of March,
493.
The greater number of the Irish are now Romanists, and fancy that St. Patrick was so too, and
that he was sent by the Pope to Ireland. But he has left writings which clearly prove that this is
quite untrue. And moreover, although the bishops of Rome had been advancing in power, and
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although corruptions were growing in the Church in his time, yet neither the claims of these bishops,
nor the other corruptions of the Roman Church, had then reached anything like their present height.
Let us hope and pray that God may be pleased to deliver our Irish brethren of the Romish communion
from the bondage of ignorance and error in which they are now unhappily held!
The Church continued to flourish in Ireland after St Patrick’s death, and learning found a home
there, while wars and conquests banished it from most other countries of the West. In the year 565,
the Irish Church sent forth a famous missionary named Columba, who, with twelve companions,
went into Scotland. He preached among the Northern Picts, and founded a monastery in one of the
Western Islands, which from him got the name of Icolumbkill (that is to say, the Island of Columba
of the Churches). From that little island the light of the Gospel afterwards spread, not only over
Scotland, but far towards the south of England, and many monasteries, both in Scotland and in
Ireland, were under the rule of its abbot.
For hundreds of years the schools of Ireland continued to be in great repute. Young men flocked
to them from England, and even from foreign lands, and many Irish missionaries laboured in various
countries abroad. The chief of these who fall within the time to which this little book reaches, was
Columban (a different person from Columba, although their names are so like). He left Ireland with
twelve companions, in the year 589, preached in the East of France for many years, and afterwards
in Switzerland and all Italy, and died in 615, at the monastery of Bobbio, which he had founded
among the Apennine mountains. One of his disciples, Gall, is styled “The Apostle of Switzerland,”
and founded a great monastery, which from him is called St. Gall.
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CHAPTER XXVI: CLOVIS (AD 496)
The most famous and the most important of all the conversions which took place about this
time was that of Clovis, king of the Franks. From being the chief of a small, though brave people,
on the borders of France and Belgium, he grew by degrees to be the founder of the great French
monarchy. His queen, Clotilda, was a Christian, and long tried in vain to bring him over to her
faith. “The gods whom you worship,” she said, “are nothing, and can profit neither themselves nor
others; for they are graven out of stone, or wood, or metal, and the names which you give them
were not the names of gods but of men. But He ought rather to be worshipped who by His word
made out of nothing the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that in them is.” Clovis does not
seem to have cared very much about the truth, one way or the other, but he had the fancy (which
was common among the heathens, and which is often mentioned in the Old Testament), that if
people did not prosper in this world, the god whom they served could not have the power to protect
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them and give them success. And, as he lived in the time when the Roman empire of the West came
to an end, the fall of the empire, which had now been Christian for more than a hundred and fifty
years, seemed to him to prove that the Christian religion could not be true.
Clotilda persuaded her husband to let their eldest son be baptized. But the child died within a
few days after, and Clovis said that his baptism was the cause of his death. When another prince
was born, however, he allowed him too to be baptized. Clotilda continued to press her husband
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with all the reasons that she could think of in order to bring him over to the Gospel. Some of her
reasons were true and good; some of them were drawn from the superstitious opinions of these
times, such as stories about miracles wrought at the tomb of St. Martin at Tours. Perhaps the bad
reasons were more likely than the good ones to have an effect on a rough barbarian prince such as
Clovis; but Clotilda could make nothing of him in any way.
At length, in the year 496, he was engaged in battle with a German tribe, at a place called
Tolbiac, near Cologne, and found himself in great danger of being defeated. He called on his own
gods, but without success, and at last he bethought himself of the God to whose worship Clotilda
had so long been trying to convert him. So, in his anxiety, he stretched out his arms towards the
sky, and called on the name of Christ, promising that, if the God of Clotilda would help him in his
strait, he would become a Christian. A victory followed, which Clovis ascribed to the effect of his
prayer. He then put himself under the instruction of St. Remigius, bishop of Rheims, that he might
get a knowledge of Christian doctrine, and at the following Christmas he was baptized in Rheims
cathedral, where the kings of France were afterwards crowned for centuries, down to the unfortunate
Charles X, in 1824. Remigius caused it to be decked for the occasion with beautiful carpets and
hangings. A vast number of tapers shed their bright light over the building, while all without was
covered by the darkness of a December evening; and we are told that the sweet perfume of incense
seemed to those who were there like the air of paradise. As Clovis entered the church, and heard
the solemn chant of psalms, he was overcome with awe. Turning to Remigius, who led him by the
hand, he asked, “Is this the kingdom of heaven which you have promised me?” “No,” answered
the bishop; “but it is the beginning of the way to it.” When they had reached the font, Remigius
addressed the king by a name on which the noblest among the Franks prided
themselves,—“Sicambrian, gently bow thy neck, worship that which thou hast burnt, and burn that
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which thou hast worshipped.” Three thousand of the Frankish warriors were forthwith baptized, in
imitation of their leader.
Remigius had much influence over Clovis as to religious things, and instructed him as he found
opportunity. One day, as he was reading to the king the story of our Lord’s sufferings, Clovis was
so much moved by it that he started up in anger and cried out—“If I had been there with my Franks,
I would have avenged His wrongs!”
From what has been said, it will be understood that the religion of Clovis was not of an
enlightened kind; and there was much in his character and actions which did not become his Christian
profession. Yet his conversion, such as it was, appears to have been sincere. As his conquests
spread, he put down Arianism wherever he found it, and planted the Catholic faith instead of it.
And from the circumstance that Clovis was converted to Catholic Christianity at a time when all
the other princes of the West were Arians, and when the emperor of the East favoured the heresy
of Eutyches (p 129), the kings of France got the title of “Eldest Son of the Church.”
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CHAPTER XXVII: JUSTINIAN (AD 527–565)
It would be wearisome to follow very particularly the history of the Church in the East for the
next century and a half after the Council of Chalcedon (AD 451).
The most important reign during this time was that of the Emperor Justinian, which lasted
eight-and-thirty years, from 527 to 565. Under him the Vandals were conquered in Africa, and the
Goths in Italy. Both these countries became once more parts of the empire, and Arianism was put
down in both.
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Justinian also, in the year 529, put an end to the old heathen philosophy, by ordering that the
schools of Athens, in which St. Basil, St. Gregory of Nazianzum, and the emperor Julian had studied
together two hundred years before (p 68), should be shut up. The philosophers, who had continued
to teach their heathen notions there (although they had been obliged to treat the religion of the
empire with outward respect), were in great distress at finding their trade taken away from them.
They thought it unsafe to remain in Justinian’s dominions, and made their way into Persia, where
the king was a heathen, and was said to be a friend of learned men. The king received them kindly;
but the Persian heathenism was very different from their own, and the ways of the country were
altogether strange to them; so that they felt themselves very uncomfortable in Persia, and became
so home-sick as to be willing to risk even their lives for the sake of getting back to their own country.
Happily for them, the Persian king was able to intercede for them in making a peace with Justinian,
and it was agreed that they might live within the empire as they liked, without being troubled by
the laws, if they would only remain quiet, and not try to draw Christian youths away from the faith.
The philosophers were too glad to return on such terms. I wish I could tell that they became
Christians themselves: but all that is said of them is, that when they died, there were no more of
the kind, and that heathen philosophy no longer stood in the way of the Gospel.
Justinian spent vast sums of money on buildings, especially on churches; but it is said that much
of what he spent in this way had been got by oppressive taxes and by other bad means, so that we
cannot think much the better of him for it. The grandest of all his buildings was the cathedral of
Constantinople. The church had been founded by Constantine the Great, but was once burnt down
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after the banishment of St. Chrysostom, and a second time in this reign. Justinian rebuilt it at a vast
expense, and, as he cast his eyes around it on the day of the consecration, after expressing his
thankfulness to God for having been allowed to accomplish so great a work, he gave vent to the
pride of his heart in the words: “I have beaten thee, O Solomon!” The cathedral was afterwards
partly destroyed by an earthquake, but Justinian again restored it, and caused it to be once more
consecrated, about two years before his death. We learn from one of his laws that this church had
sixty priests, a hundred deacons, forty deaconesses, ninety subdeacons, a hundred and ten readers,
five-and-twenty singers, and a hundred doorkeepers. And (which we should perhaps not have
expected to hear) the law was made for the purpose of preventing the number of clergy connected
with the cathedral from increasing beyond this, lest it should not have wealth enough to maintain
a greater number! This great building is still standing (although it is now in the hands of the
Mahometan Turks); and it is regarded as one of the wonders of the world. It was dedicated to the
Eternal Wisdom, and is now commonly known by the name of St. Sophia (“sophia” being the Greek
word for “wisdom”).
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CHAPTER XXVIII: NESTORIANS AND MONOPHYSITES.
From the time of the Council of Chalcedon (AD 451), to the end of Justinian’s reign, the Eastern
Church was vexed by controversies which arose out of the opinions of Eutyches (Chap. XXII). On
account of these quarrels, the Churches of Rome and Constantinople would have no intercourse
with each other for five-and-thirty years (AD 484–519). The party which had at first been called
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Eutychians (after Eutyches) afterwards got the name of “Monophysites”, (that is to say, “maintainers
of one nature only”)—because they said that after Our Blessed Lord had taken on Him the nature
of man, His Godhead and His manhood made up but one nature; whereas the Catholics held that
His two natures remain perfect and distinct in Him. The party split up into a number of divisions,
the very names of which it is difficult to remember. And other quarrels arose out of the great
controversy with the Eutychians. The most noted of these was the dispute as to what were called
the “Three Articles.” It was not properly a question respecting the faith, but whether certain writings,
then a hundred years old, were or were not favourable to Nestorianism. But it was thought so
important, that a council, which is reckoned as the fifth general council, was held on account of it
at Constantinople in the year 553.
Notwithstanding all their quarrels among themselves, the Monophysites grew very strong in
various countries. In Egypt they were more in number than the Catholics. The Abyssinian Church
(which, as we saw in a former chapter (Chap X), was considered as a daughter of the Egyptian
Church) took up these opinions. The Nubians were converted from heathenism by Monophysite
missionaries; and in Armenia the church exchanged the Catholic doctrine for the Monophysite in
the sixth century.
But the most remarkable man of this sect was a Syrian named Jacob. He found his party suffering
and greatly weakened, in consequence of the laws which the emperors had made against it; and
most of the bishops and clergy had been removed by banishment imprisonment, or other means.
Being resolved to preserve the sect, if possible, from dying out, Jacob went to Constantinople, made
his way into the prison where some of the Monophysite bishops were confined, and was secretly
consecrated by them as a bishop, with authority to watch over all the congregations of their
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communion throughout Syria and the East. For nearly forty (AD 541–578) he laboured in carrying
out the work which he had undertaken, with a zeal and a stedfastness which we cannot but admire,
although we must regret that they were employed in the cause of heresy. In order that he might not
be known, as there were severe laws against spreading his opinions, he dressed himself as a beggar,
and thence got the dance of “The Ragged”. In this disguise, he travelled, without ceasing, over
Syria and Mesopotamia. His secret was faithfully kept by the members of his party. He stirred up
their spirit, ordained bishops and clergy to minister among them in private, and at his death, in 578,
he left the sect large and flourishing. From this Jacob, the Monophysites of other countries, as well
as of his own, got the name of Jacobites, in return for which they called the Catholics
“Melchites,”—that is to say, followers of the emperor’s religion. And by these names of Melchites
and Jacobites, the remnants of the old Christian parties in the East are known to this day. (These
Jacobites of the East must not be confounded with the Jacobites of English history, who were the
friends of James II, and of his family, after the Revolution of 1688.)
The Nestorians also continued to be a strong body. Both they and the Monophysites were very
active in missions—more active, indeed, than the eastern Catholics. The Nestorians, in particular,
made great numbers of converts in Persia (where the heathen kings would allow no other kind of
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Christianity than Nestorianism), in India, and in other parts of Asia. And in the seventh century
(which is somewhat beyond the bounds of this little book) their missionaries made their way even
to China, where they preached with great success.
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CHAPTER XXIX: ST. BENEDICT
PART I (AD 480–529)
Let us now look again at the monks. Their way of life was at first devised as a means of either
practising repentance for sin, or rising to such a height of holiness as was supposed to be beyond
the reach of persons busied in the affairs of this world. But in course of time a change took place.
As the life of monks grew more common, it grew less strict; indeed, it would seem that whenever
any way of life which professes to be very strict becomes common, its strictness will pretty surely
be lessened, or given up altogether. People at first turned monks because they felt that such means
of holy living as they had been used to did not make them so good as they ought to be, and because
they hoped to do better in this new kind of life. But when the monkish life was no longer new,
monks neglected its rules, just as those before them had neglected the rules which holy Scripture
and the Church had laid down for all Christians.
In the unhappy days which had now come on, the monasteries of the West had in great measure
escaped the evils of war and conquest which laid waste everything around them. The barbarians,
who overwhelmed the empire, generally respected them; and now the life of monks, instead of
being chosen for its hardships, as it had been at first, came to be regarded as the easiest and the
safest life of all. It was sought after as one which would free people from the dangers to which they
would be liable if they remained in the world, and took the common share of the world’s risks and
troubles.
Another important matter was this—that monkery had taken its rise in Egypt and in Syria, where
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the climate and the habits of the people were very different from those of the western countries.
And a great part of the monkish rules were fitted only for the particular circumstances and character
of the eastern nations;—for instance, they could do with less food than the people of the West, so
that a writer of the fifth century said, “A large appetite is gluttony in the Greeks, but in the Gauls
it is nature.” Again, the Egyptians and the Syrians, in their hot climate, did not need active
employment in the same way as the western nations do, in order to keep their minds and their bodies
healthful. They could spend their hours and their days in calmly thinking of spiritual things, or of
nothing at all, in a way which the more active mind of Europeans cannot bear. And again, many
rules as to dress, which are suitable for one sort of climate, are quite unfit for a different sort.
Now the earlier rules for monks had been drawn up either in the East or after eastern patterns.
And although, when they were brought into the West, people for a time obeyed them as well as
they could, it was found that they would not obey them any longer when the first heat of zeal for
monkery had passed away. Hence it followed, that, throughout the monasteries of the West, there
was a general neglect of the rules by which they professed to be governed; and it was high time
that there should be some reformation.
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A reformer arose in the sixth century. This was Benedict, who was born near Nursia, in Italy,
in the year 480. At the age of twelve he was sent to school at Rome, under the care of a nurse, as
seems to have been usual in those days. He worked hard at his studies, but the bad behaviour of
the other boys and young men at Rome so shocked him, that, when he had been there two years,
he resolved to bear it no longer. He therefore suddenly ran away from the city, and, after his nurse
had gone a considerable distance with him, he left her, and made his way into a rough and lonely
country near Subiaco, where he took up his abode in a cave. Here he was found out by a monk of
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a neighbouring house, named Romanus, who used daily to save part of his own allowance of food,
and to carry it to his young friend. The cave opened from the face of a lofty rock, and the way that
Romanus took of conveying the food to Benedict was by letting it down at the end of a string from
the top of the rock.
Benedict had lived in this manner for three years when he was discovered by some shepherds,
who at first took him for some wild animal; but they soon found that he was something very different.
He taught them and others to whom they made his abode known, and his character came to be so
much respected in the neighbourhood that he was chosen abbot of a monastery. He warned the
monks that they would probably not like him, but they were resolved to have him nevertheless.
Their habits, however, were so bad, that Benedict felt himself obliged to check them rather sharply;
and the monks then attempted to get rid of him by mixing poison in his drink. But he found out
their wicked design, and the only reproof which he gave them was by reminding them how he had
warned them not to make him their abbot. With this he left them to themselves, and went quietly
back to his cave.
His name now grew more and more famous. Great multitudes of people flocked to see him,
and even persons of high rank sent their sons to be trained under him. He built twelve monasteries,
each for an abbot and twelve monks. But there was a spiteful monk, named Florentius, who would
not allow him any peace so long as they were near each other; so Benedict thought it best to give
way, and in 528 he left Subiaco, with some companions, and, after some wanderings, arrived at
Mount Cassino. There he found that the country people still worshipped some of the old heathen
gods, and that there was a grove which was held sacred to these gods. But he set boldly to work,
and, notwithstanding all that could be done to oppose him, he cut down the grove, destroyed the
idols, and built a little chapel, from which in time grew up a great and famous monastery, which
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still exists. And at Mount Cassino he drew up his Rule in the year 529; so that the beginning of the
monks of St. Benedict was in the very same year in which heathen philosophy came to its end by
the closing of the schools of Athens (p 143).
PART II (AD 529–543)
Benedict had seen the mischief which arose from too great strictness of rules. He saw how it
led to open disobedience and carelessness in some, and to hypocritical pretence in others; and
therefore he meant to guard against these faults by making his rule milder than those of the East.
It was to be such that Europeans might keep it without danger to their health, and he allowed it to
be varied according to the circumstances of the different countries in which it might be established.
Every Benedictine monastery was to be under an abbot, who was to be chosen by the monks.
The brethren were to obey the abbot in everything, while the abbot was charged not to be haughty
or tyrannical in using his authority. Next to the abbot there might either be a “provost,” or (which
Benedict liked better) there might be a number of “elders” or “deans,” who were to help and advise
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the abbot in the government of his monasteries. Any one who wished to join the order was to
undergo trial for a year before admission. Those who were admitted into it were required to give
in a written vow that they would continue in it, that they would amend their lives, and that they
would obey those who were set over them. Every monk was obliged to give up all his property to
the order; nobody was allowed to have anything of his own, but all things were common to the
brethren. The monks might not receive any presents or letters, even from their nearest relations,
without the abbot’s knowledge and leave, and if a present were sent for one of them, the abbot had
the power to keep it from him, and to give it to any other monk.
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It was one important part of the rule that the monks should have sufficient employment provided
for them. They were to get up at two o’clock in the morning; they were to attend eight services a
day, or, if they happened to be at a distance from their monastery, they were to observe the hours
of the services by prayer; and they were to work seven hours. Portions of time were allowed for
learning psalms by heart, and for reading the Scriptures, lives of holy men, and other edifying
books. At meals the monks were not to talk, but some book was to be read aloud to them. Their
food was to be plain and simple; no flesh was allowed, except to the sick. But all such matters were
to be settled by the abbot, according to the climate and the season, to the age, the health, and the
employment of the monks. Their dress was to be coarse, but was to be varied according to
circumstances. They were to sleep by ten or twenty in a room, each in a separate bed, and without
taking off their clothes. A dean was to have the care of each room, and a light was to be kept burning
in each. No talking was to be allowed after the last service of the day.
The monks were never to go beyond the monastery without leave, and, in order that there might
be little occasion for their going out, it was to contain within its walls the garden, the well, the mill,
the bakehouse, and other such necessary things. The abbot was to set every monk his work; if it
were found that any one was inclined to pride himself on his skill in any art or trade, he was not to
be allowed to practise it, but was obliged to take up some other employment.
Benedict died in 543, and by that time his order had made its way into France, Spain, and Sicily.
It soon drew into itself all the monks of the West, and was divided into a number of branches, which
all looked up to Benedict as their founder; and, although it would be a sad mistake to wish for any
revival of monkery in our own days, we ought, in justice, to see and to acknowledge that through
God’s providence these monks became the means of great benefits to mankind. Not only were their
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services important for the maintenance of the Gospel where it was already planted, and for the
spreading of it among the heathen, but they cleared forests, brought waste lands into tillage, and
did much to civilize the rude nations among whom they laboured. After a time, learning began to
be cultivated among them, and during the troubled ages which followed, it found a refuge in the
monasteries. The monks taught the young; they copied the Scriptures and other ancient books (for
printing was as yet unknown); they wrote histories of their times, and other books of their own. To
them, indeed, it is that we are mainly indebted for preserving the knowledge of the past through
many centuries.
CHAPTER XXX: END OF THE SIXTH CENTURY
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PART I
We must not suppose that the conversion of the western barbarians was of any very perfect
kind. They mixed up a great deal of their own barbarism with their Christianity, and, besides this,
they took up many of the vices of the old and worn-out nations, whose countries they had conquered
and occupied. Much heathen superstition lingered among them: it was even a common saying in
Spain, that “if a man has to pass between heathen altars and God’s Church, it is no harm if he pay
his respects to both.” The clergy were very wealthy and prosperous, but did not venture to interfere
with the vices of the great and powerful; or, if they did, it was at their peril. For instance, when a
bishop of Rouen had offended the Frankish queen Fredegund, she caused him to be murdered in
his own cathedral, at the most solemn service of Easter-day.
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Religion became a protection to crime; murderers were allowed to take refuge in churches, and
might not be dragged out until after an oath had been made that their lives should be safe. It had
been the ancient custom of the Germans to let all crimes be atoned for by the payment of money:
if, for example, a person had killed another, he had no more to do than to pay a certain sum to the
dead man’s relations. And this way of making up for misdeeds was now brought into the Church:
it was thought that men might make satisfaction for their sins by paying money, and that the effect
would be the same if others paid for them after their death. We may understand how this worked
from another story of queen Fredegund, who seems to have been a perfect monster of wickedness.
She set two of her pages to murder a king, named Sigebert; and, by way of encouraging them, she
said that she would honour them highly, if they came off with their lives; but that, if they were
slain, she would lay out a great deal of money in alms for the good of their souls!
As might naturally have been expected among such people, it came to be very commonly
thought that the observance of outward worship and ceremonies was all that religion required.
Pretended miracles were wrought in great numbers, for the purpose of imposing on the ignorant;
and all, from the king downwards, were then ignorant enough to be deceived by them. The
superstitions which had begun in the fourth century (p 90) continued to grow on the Church; such
as the reverence paid to saints, and especially to the Blessed Virgin, so that people allowed them
a part of the honour which ought to have been kept for God alone. Among other such corruptions
were the reverence for the “relics” of saints (that is, for parts of their bodies, or for things which
had belonged to them), and the religious honour paid to images and pictures. These and other evils
increased more and more, until, at length, they could be borne no longer, and, in many countries,
they caused the great religious change which is called the “Reformation”.
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But nearly a thousand years had to pass before the time of the Reformation; and, in the
meanwhile, although much was amiss in the Christianity which prevailed, it yet was the means of
blessing and of salvation. And there were never wanting good men who, although there were many
defects and errors in their opinions, firmly held and clearly taught the necessity of a real living faith
in Christ, and of a thoroughly earnest endeavour to obey God’s holy will.
PART II
The state of Italy towards the end of the sixth century was very wretched. Vast numbers of its
people had perished in the course of the wars by which Justinian’s generals had wrested the country
from the Goths, and had again united it to the empire; multitudes of others had been destroyed by
famine and pestilence. The Lombards, who had crossed the Alps in the year 568, had obliged the
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emperors to yield the North, and part of the middle, of Italy to them; and they continually threatened
the portions which still remained to the empire. No help against them was to be got from
Constantinople; and the governors whom the emperors sent to manage their Italian dominions,
instead of directing and leading the people to resist the Lombards, only hindered them from taking
their defence into their own hands.
The land was left uncultivated, partly through the loss of inhabitants, and partly because those
who remained were disheartened by the miseries of the time. They had not the spirit to bestow their
labour on it, when there was almost a certainty that their crops would be destroyed or carried off
by the Lombard invaders; and the soil, when left to itself, had in many places become so
unwholesome, that it was not fit to live on. Italy had in former times been so thickly peopled, that
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it had been necessary to get supplies of corn from Sicily and from Africa. But now such foreign
supplies were wanted for a very different reason—that the inhabitants of Italy could not, or did not,
grow corn for themselves. The city of Rome had suffered from storms, and from repeated floods
of the river Tiber, which did a great deal of damage to its buildings, and sometimes washed away
or spoiled the stores of corn which were laid up in the granaries. The people were kept in terror by
the Lombards, who often advanced to their very walls, so that it was unsafe to venture beyond the
gates.
The condition of the Church too was very deplorable. The troubles of the times had produced
a general decay of morals and order both among the clergy and among the people. The Lombards
were Arians, and religious enmity was added to the other causes of dislike between them and the
Romans. In Istria, there was a division which had begun after the fifth general council (p 145), and
which kept the Church of that country separate from the communion of Rome for a hundred and
fifty years. The sunken condition of Christianity in Gaul (or France) has been described in the
beginning of this chapter. Spain was just recovered from Arianism (p 134), but there was much to
be done before the Catholic faith could be considered as firmly established there. In Africa, the old
sect of the Donatists began again to lift up its head, and took courage from the confusions of the
time to vex the Church. The Churches of the East were torn by quarrels as to Eutychianism and
Nestorianism. And the patriarchs at Constantinople seemed likely, with the help of the emperor’s
favour, to be dangerous rivals to the popes of Rome.
Such was the state of things when Gregory the Great became pope or bishop of Rome, in the
year 590.
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CHAPTER XXXI: ST GREGORY THE GREAT (AD 540–604)
PART I
Gregory was born at Rome, of a noble and wealthy family, in the year 540. In his youth he
engaged in public business, and he rose to be proctor of Rome, which was one of the chief offices
under the government. In this office he was much beloved and respected by the people. But about
the age of thirty-five, a great change took place in his life. He resolved to forsake the pursuit of
worldly honours, and spent all his wealth in founding seven monasteries. He gave up his family
house at Rome to be a monastery, in which he became at first a simple monk, and was afterwards
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chosen abbot. A pope, named Pelagius, showed him great favour, by making him his secretary, and
employing him for some years as a sort of ambassador at the emperor’s court at Constantinople.
And when Pelagius was carried off by a plague, in the year 589, the nobles, the clergy, and the
people of Rome all agreed in choosing Gregory to succeed him.
Gregory was afraid to undertake the office. It was necessary that the emperor should consent
to his appointment; and he wrote to beg that the emperor would refuse his consent. But the governor
of Rome stopped the letter, and all the other attempts which Gregory made to escape the honour
intended for him were baffled; so that in the end he was obliged to submit, and was consecrated as
bishop of Rome in September, 590.
Gregory felt all the difficulties of his new place. He compares his Church to an old ship, shattered
by winds and waves, decayed in its timbers, full of leaks, and in continual danger of going to wreck.
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The vast quantity and variety of business which he went through appears to us from the collection
of his letters, of which about eight hundred and fifty still remain. We see from these how he strove
to strengthen his Church in all quarters, and what steps he took for the government of it. Some of
the letters are addressed to emperors and kings, and treat about the greatest affairs of Church or
State. And then all at once we find him passing from such high matters to direct that some poor
tenant on one of his estates should be excused from paying a part of his rent, or that relief should
be given to some widow or orphan who had written from a distance to ask his help.
The bishops of Rome had by degrees become very rich. They had estates, not only in Italy and
Sicily, but in Africa, in France, and even in Asia. And the people who managed these estates were
employed by Gregory to carry on his other business in the same countries, and to report the state
of the Church to him from all quarters. Very little of his large income was spent on himself. We
may have some notion of the plain way in which the great bishop lived from one of his letters to
the steward of his estates in Sicily. “You have sent me,” says Gregory, “one wretched horse, and
five good asses. I cannot ride the horse because he is wretched, nor the good beasts, because they
are but asses.” He lived chiefly in the company of monks and clergy, employing himself in study
with them. And, in the midst of all the business which took up his time, he wrote a number of books,
of which some are very valuable. He was also famous as a preacher. Among his sermons are a set
of twenty-two on the prophet Ezekiel, which he had meant to carry further. But he was obliged to
break off by the attacks of the Lombards, as he told his people in the end of the last sermon—“Let
no one blame me,” he says, “if after this discourse I stop, since, as you all see, our troubles are
multiplied on us. On every side we are surrounded with swords; on every side we dread the danger
of death which is close at hand. Some come back to us with their hands out off; we hear of some
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as being taken prisoners, and of others as slain. I am forced to withhold my tongue from expounding,
since my soul is weary of my life (Job x. 1). How can I, who am forced daily to drink bitter things,
draw forth sweet things to you? What remains for us, but that in the chastisement which we are
suffering because of our misdeeds, we should give thanks with weeping to Him who made us, and
who hath bestowed on us the spirit of adoption (Rom. viii. 15)—to Him who sometimes nourisheth
His children with bread, and sometimes correcteth them with a scourge—who, by benefits and by
sufferings alike, is training us for an eternal inheritance?”
Gregory laboured zealously in improving the education of the clergy, and in reforming such
disorders as he found in his Church. He founded a school for singing, and established a new way
of chanting, which from him has the name of the “Gregorian Chant”, and is used to this day. We
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are told that the whip with which he used to correct his choristers was kept at Rome as a relic for
hundreds of years.
His charities were very great. On the first day of every month he gave out large quantities of
provisions to the people of Rome. The old nobility had suffered so much by the wars, and by the
loss of their estates in countries which had been torn from them by the barbarians, that many of
them were glad to come in for a share of the good pope’s bounty. Every day he sent relief to a
number of poor persons in all parts of the city; and he used to send dishes from his own table to
those whom he knew to be in distress, but ashamed to ask for assistance. Once when a poor man
was found dead in the streets, Gregory denied himself the holy communion for some days, because
it seemed to him that he must be in some measure to blame. He used to receive strangers and
wanderers at his own table, out of regard for our Lord’s words—“Inasmuch as ye have done it unto
one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto Me.” (St. Matt. xxv. 40).
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PART II
Having thus seen something of Gregory’s life at home, we must now look at his proceedings
in other quarters.
He had a sharp dispute with a bishop of Constantinople, on account of the title of “Universal
Bishop”, which the patriarchs of the eastern capital had for some time taken to themselves. When
we hear such a title, we may naturally fancy that it signified a claim to authority over the whole
Church on earth. But, as it was then used, it really had no such meaning. The Greeks were fond of
lofty and sounding titles, which seemed to mean much more than they were really understood to
mean. This fondness appears in the titles of the emperors and of the officers of their empire, and it
was by it that the patriarchs were led to style themselves “Universal Bishop.” If the title had been
intended as a claim to authority over all Churches, it could only have been given to one person at
a time, but we find that the emperor Justinian gave it to the bishops both of Constantinople and of
Rome, and that he styled each of them “Head of all the Churches”; and, whatever the patriarchs of
Constantinople may have meant by it, they certainly did not make any claim to authority over Rome
or the western Church.
But there was an old jealousy between the sees of Rome and Constantinople, ever since the
time when the second general council in 381 gave the bishop of Constantinople the second place
of honour in the whole Church (p 84). This jealousy had grown greater in late times, when there
was no very kindly feeling between the emperors and their Italian subjects, and when it seemed
not impossible that the bishop of the new capital, backed by the emperor, might even try to dispute
the first place with the bishop of Rome. And Gregory, who did not understand the Greek language,
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or how little the Greeks meant by their fine titles, was ready to take offence at the name of “Universal
Bishop.” So, when a bishop of Constantinople, John the Faster, styled himself so on an important
occasion, Gregory objected strongly,—he wrote to John, to the emperor, and to the bishops of
Alexandria and of Antioch, declaring that the title was proud and foolish, that it came from the
devil, and was a token of Antichrist’s approach, and that it was unfit for any Christian bishop to
use. The emperor, however, would not help him against the patriarch. John would not yield, and
the other eastern patriarchs (partly from a wish to be at peace, and partly because the words did not
seem offensive to them, as they did to Gregory), were little disposed to take up his quarrel. After
a time, another emperor, who had special reasons for wishing to stand well with Gregory; forbade
the successor of John to call himself “Universal;” but the title was soon restored by the emperors
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to the bishops of Constantinople, although not until after the death of Gregory. The most curious
part of the story, however, is this—that Gregory’s successors in the popedom have taken up the
very title which he condemned so strongly; and that, instead of using it in the harmless meaning
which it had in the East, they have intended it as a claim to power over the whole Church,— that
claim of which the very notion filled Gregory with such horror and indignation, and which he
declared to be unfit for any bishop whatever to make.
PART III
Gregory did much to bring over the Lombards from their Arianism, and he succeeded in part,
although the work was not completed until after his time. He also laboured earnestly to revive the
Church in France and in other countries. But instead of dwelling on these things, I shall content
myself with telling of the chief work which he did in spreading the Gospel; and it is one which
very much concerns ourselves.
In those days slavery was common throughout all the known world, and, although the gospel
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had wrought a great improvement in the treatment of slaves, by making the masters feel that they
and their slaves were brethren in Christ, it yet had not forbidden slavery. But there was a feeling
of pity for those who fell into this sad condition by the chances of war or otherwise. It was a common
act of charity for good Christians to redeem captives and to set them at liberty. This, indeed, was
thought so holy a work, and so agreeable to the words of Scripture—“I will have mercy, and not
sacrifice” (Hos. vi. 6; St. Matt. ix. 13) that bishops often broke up and sold even the consecrated
plate of their churches in order that they might get the means of ransoming captives whom they
heard of. And, although slavery was still allowed by the laws of Christian kingdoms, those laws
took care that Christian slaves should not be under Jews, or masters of any other than their own
religion. Gregory, then, while he was yet a monk, went one day into the market at Rome, just after
the arrival of some merchants with a large cargo of slaves for sale. Some of these poor creatures,
perhaps, had been taken in war; others had probably been sold by their own parents for the sake of
the price which they fetched; for we are told that this shocking practice was not uncommon among
some of the ruder nations. As Gregory looked at them, his eyes fell on some boys with whose
appearance he was greatly struck. Their skin was fair, unlike the dark complexions of the Italians
and other southern nations whom he had been used to see, their features were beautiful, and they
had long light flowing hair. He asked the merchants from what land these boys had been brought.
“From Britain,” they said; and they told him that the bright complexion which he admired so much
was common among the people of that island. Perhaps Gregory had never thought of Britain before.
It was nearly two hundred years since the Roman troops had been withdrawn from it, and its
habitants had been left to themselves. And since that time the pagan Saxons had overrun it; the
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Romans had lost the countries which lay between them and it; and Britain had quite disappeared
from their knowledge. Gregory, therefore, was obliged to ask whether the people were Christians
or heathens, and he was told that they were still heathens. The good monk sighed deeply. “Alas,
and woe!” said he, “that people with such faces of light should belong to the author of darkness,
and that so goodly an outward favour should be void of inward grace.” He asked what was the
name of their nation, and was told that they were “Angles”. “It is well,” he said, “for they have
angels’ faces, and such as they ought to be joint-heirs with the angels in heaven.—What is the name
of the province from which they come?” He was told that it was Deira (a Saxon kingdom, which
stretched along the eastern side of Britain, from the Humber to the Tyne). The name of Deira
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sounded to Gregory’s ears like two Latin words, which mean “from wrath.” “Well, again,” he said,
“they are delivered from the wrath of God, and are called to the mercy of Christ.—What is the
name of the king of that country?” “Aella,” was the answer. “Alleluiah!” (“Praise to God!”)
exclaimed Gregory, “the praises of God their maker ought to be sung in that kingdom.”
He went at once to the pope, and asked leave to go as a missionary to the heathens of Britain.
But, although the pope consented, the people of Rome were so much attached to Gregory that they
would not allow him to set out, and he was obliged to give up the plan. Yet he did not forget the
heathens of Britain, and when he became pope, although he could not himself go to them, he was
able to send others for the work of their conversion.
An opening had been made by the marriage of Ethelbert, king of Kent, the Saxon kingdom
which lay nearest to the continent, with Bertha, daughter of Charibert, a Frankish king, whose
capital was Paris (AD 570). As Charibert and his family were Christians, it had been agreed that
the young queen should be allowed freely to practise her religion, and a French bishop, named
Luidhard, came to England with her, and acted as her chaplain. Ethelbert by degrees became much
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more powerful than he was at the time of his marriage, and in 593 he was chosen “Bretwalda,”
which was the title given to the chief of the Saxon kings. This office gave him much influence over
most of the other kingdoms; so that, if his favour could be gained, it was likely to be of very great
advantage for recommending the Gospel to others. But Ethelbert was still a heathen, after having
been married to Bertha about five-and-twenty years, although we may well suppose that she had
sometimes spoken to him of her religion, and had tried to bring him over to it. And perhaps Bertha
may have had a share in sending Gregory the reports which he mentions, that the Saxons in England
were ready to receive the Gospel, and in begging him to take pity on them.
PART IV
In the year 596 Gregory sent off a party of monks as missionaries to the English Saxons. The
head of them was Augustine, who had been provost (that is, the highest person after the abbot—p
150) of the monastery to which the pope himself had formerly belonged. And, at the same time,
Gregory directed the manager of his estates in France to buy up a number of captive Saxon youths,
and to place them in monasteries, that they might learn the Christian faith, and might afterwards
become missionaries to their own countrymen.
When Augustine and his brethren had got as far as the south of France, they heard many terrible
stories of the English, so they took fright at the thought of going among such savages, whose very
language was unknown to them; and Augustine went back to Rome to beg that they might be
allowed to give up their undertaking. But Gregory would not consent to this. He encouraged them
to go on, and he gave Augustine letters to some French kings and bishops, desiring them to assist
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the missionaries, and to supply them with interpreters who understood the language of the Saxons.
Augustine, therefore, returned to the place where he had left his companions. They made their way
across France, and in 597 he landed, with about forty monks, in the Isle of Thanet.
Ethelbert lived at Canterbury, the capital of the Kentish kingdom, at no great distance from the
place where the missionaries had landed. On receiving notice of their arrival, he sent to desire that
they would remain where they were until he should visit them; and within a few days he went to
them. The meeting was held in the open air; for Ethelbert had a superstitious fear that they might
do him some mischief by magical arts, if he were to trust himself under a roof with them. The
missionaries advanced in procession, with a silver cross borne before them, and displaying a picture
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of the crucified Saviour; and, as they slowly moved onwards, they chanted a prayer for their own
salvation and that of the people to whom they had been sent. Ethelbert received them courteously,
and desired them to sit down: and then Augustine made a speech, telling the king that they were
come to preach the word of life to him and to his subjects. “These are indeed fair words and promises
which you bring with you,” said Ethelbert; “but, because they are new and uncertain, I cannot at
once take up with them, and leave the faith which I and all my people have so long observed. But
as you have come from far and as I think you wish to give us a share in things which you believe
to be true and most profitable, we will not show you unkindness, but rather will receive you
hospitably, and not hinder you from converting as many as you can to your religion.”
He then granted them a lodging in his capital, and ordered that they should be supplied with all
that they might need. As they drew near to Canterbury, they again displayed the silver cross, and
the banner on which the Saviour was painted; and they entered the city in procession, chanting a
litany which Gregory had made for the people of Rome, during the great plague which carried off
pope Pelagius.
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A little way outside the city they found a small church which had been built in the days of the
old British Christianity, and in which Luidhard had since held his service for Queen Bertha and
the Christians of her court. It was called by the name of St. Martin; for even before the Saxon
invasion his name had become so famous that many churches were called after it; and we may well
believe that Queen Bertha, on arriving from France, was glad to find that the church in which she
was to worship had long ago been named in honour of the great saint of her own land. There
Augustine and his brethren now held their service; and the sight of their holy, gentle, and self-denying
lives soon drew many to receive their instructions. Ethelbert himself was baptized on Whitsunday,
597, and, although he would not force his people to profess the Gospel, he declared himself desirous
of their conversion.
Gregory had desired Augustine, if he met with success in the beginning of his mission, to return
from Britain into France and be consecrated as a bishop. He now obeyed this direction, and was
consecrated at Arles; and without any delay he again crossed the sea, and renewed his labours
among the Saxons. Such was his progress in the work of conversion, that at Christmas of the year
in which he first landed in Britain ten thousand persons were baptized in one day. Four years later,
Gregory made him an archbishop; and he sent him a fresh body of clergy to help him, with a large
supply of books, vestments, and other things for the service of the Church. He also gave him
instructions how to proceed, so as to advance the true faith without giving needless offence to the
prejudices of the heathen.
Augustine’s chief difficulties, indeed, were not with the Saxons, but with the clergy of the
ancient British Church, whom he could not succeed in bringing to an agreement. We must not lay
the blame wholly on either side; if the Britons were somewhat jealous and obstinate, Augustine
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seems to have taken too much upon himself in his way of dealing with them. But, whatever his
faults may have been, we are bound to hold his memory in honour for the zealous and successful
labours by which the Gospel was a second time introduced into the southern part of this island.
Before his death, in 604, he had established a second bishop for Kent, in the city of Rochester, and
one at London, which was then the capital of the kingdom of Essex. And by degrees, partly by the
followers of St. Augustine, and partly by the Scottish monks of Icolumbkill (p 139), all the Saxon
kingdoms of England were converted to the Christian faith.
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In the same year with Augustine, Gregory also died, after a long and severe illness, which
obliged him for years to keep his bed, but could not check his activity in watching over the interests
of religion.
Gregory had intended that Augustine should be archbishop of London, because in the old Roman
days London had been the chief city of Britain; and it might seem natural that the chief bishop of
our Church should now take his title from the capital of all England. But when Gregory sent forth
his missionaries he did not know that England had been divided by the Saxons into several kingdoms.
In consequence of this division of the country, Augustine, instead of becoming archbishop of
London, fixed himself in the capital of Kent, the first kingdom which he converted, and then the
most powerful of all. Hence it is that his successors, the primates of all England, to this day, are
not archbishops of London but of Canterbury.
And, although Canterbury be not now a very large town, it is a very interesting place, and is
full of memorials of its first archbishop. The noble cathedral, called Christ Church, stands in the
same place with an ancient Roman-British church which Augustine recovered from heathen uses
and consecrated in honour of the Saviour. Close to it are the remains of the archbishop’s palace,
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built on the same ground with the palace of Ethelbert, which he gave up to the missionaries. A little
church of St. Martin still stands on a rising ground outside the city, on the spot where Bertha and
Luidhard had worshipped before the arrival of Augustine, and where he and his brethren celebrated
their earliest services. And, although it has been rebuilt since then, we may still see in its walls a
number of bricks which by their appearance are known to be Roman,— the very same materials
of which the little church was built at first, while the Romans were yet in Britain, fourteen centuries
and a half ago; nay, it is even supposed that some part of the masonry is Roman, too. Between St.
Martin’s and the cathedral lay the great monastery of St Peter and St. Paul, which Augustine began
to build. He died before it was finished; but, as soon as it was ready, his body was removed to it,
and in it Queen Bertha and her husband were afterwards buried. After a time the name of the
monastery was changed to St. Augustine’s, and for hundreds of years it was the chief monastery
of all England. The Reformation in the sixteenth century put an end to monasteries; and the buildings
of St. Augustine’s went through many changes until in the year 1844 the place was turned to a
purpose similar to that which Augustine and Gregory had at heart when they undertook the
conversion of England; for it is now a college for training missionaries. And, as Gregory wished
that Saxon boys should be brought up with a view to converting their countrymen, so there are now
at St. Augustine’s College young men from distant heathen nations, receiving an education which
may fit them hereafter to become missionaries of the Church of England to their brethren. (Among
those who were at the College when this volume was first printed was Kalli, the Esquimaux, of
whom an account has since been written by the Rev. T. B. Murray, and published by the Society
for Promoting Christian Knowledge. He afterwards went to the diocese of Newfoundland, where
he died of consumption.) Nor is the good Gregory forgotten in the city which owes so much to him;
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for within the last few years a beautiful little church called by his name has been built, close to the
college of St. Augustine.
Here this little book must close. It ends with the replanting of the Gospel in our own land. And,
if hereafter the story should be carried further, some of its brightest pages will be filled by the
labours of the missionaries who went forth from England to preach the faith of Christ in Germany
and the adjoining countries.
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169 PART II
CHAPTER I: MAHOMETANISM; IMAGE-WORSHIP (AD 612–794)
Within a few years after the death of Gregory the Great, a new religion was set up by an Arabian
named Mahomet, who seems to have been honest, although mistaken, at first, but grew less honest
as he went on, and as he became more successful and powerful. His religion was made up partly
from the Jewish, partly from the Christian, and partly from other religions which he found around
him; but he gave out that it had been taught him by visions and revelations from heaven, and these
pretended revelations were gathered into a book called the Koran, which serves Mahomet’s followers
for their Bible. This new religion was called Islam, which means submission to the will of God;
and the sum of it was declared to be that “there is but one God, and Mahomet is his prophet.”
One point in the new religion was, that every faithful Mahometan (or Mussulman, as they were
called) was required once in his life to go on pilgrimage to Mecca, a city which was Mahomet’s
birthplace, and was considered to be especially holy; and to this day it is visited every year by great
companies of pilgrims. Another remarkable thing was, that he commanded his followers to spread
their religion by force [NOTE: this is denied by many moslem scholars—check other references];
and this was done with such success, that within about sixty years after Mahomet’s death they had
conquered Syria and the Holy Land, Egypt, Persia, parts of Asia Minor, and all the north of Africa.
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A little later, they crossed the Straits of Gibraltar, and got possession of Spain, where their kingdom
at Granada lasted until 1492, nearly eight hundred years. In the countries which the Mussulmans
subdued, Christians were allowed to live and to keep up their religion; but they had to pay a heavy
tribute, and to bear great hardships and disgraces at the hands of the conquerors.
I have mentioned that before Gregory the Great’s time almost all Europe had been overrun by
the rude nations of the North (Part I, Chapter XXIII). Learning nearly died out, and what remained
of it was kept up by the monks and clergy only. There is but little to tell of the history of those
times; for, although in the Greek empire there were great disputes about some doctrines and practices,
these matters were such as you would not care to know about, nor would you be much the wiser if
you did know.
I may, however, mention that one of these disputes was about images, to which the Christians
of those ages, and especially the Greeks, had come by degrees to pay a sort of reverence which St.
Augustine and other fathers of older days would have looked on with horror. It had become usual
to fall down before images, to pray to them, to kiss them, to burn lights and incense in their honour,
to adorn them with gold, silver, and precious stones, to lay the hand on them in taking oaths, and
even to use them as godfathers or godmothers for children in baptism. Those who defend the use
of images would tell us that the honour is not given to them, but to Almighty God, to the Saviour,
and to the saints, through the images. But when we find, for instance, that people paid more honour
to one image of the blessed Virgin than to another, and that they supposed their prayers to have a
greater hope of being heard when they were said before one image than when they were said before
another, we cannot help thinking that they believed the images themselves to have some particular
virtue in them.
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There were, then, some of the Greek emperors who tried to put down the superstitious regard
for images, and they were the more set on this because the Mahometans, who abhorred images,
reproached the Christians for using them. These emperors, wishing to do away with the grounds
for such reproaches, caused the figures of stone or metal to be broken, and the sacred pictures to
be smeared over; and they persecuted very cruelly those who were foremost in defending them.
Then came other emperors who were in favour of images; or widowed empresses, who governed
during the boyhood of their sons, and took up the cause of images with great zeal; and thus the
friends and the enemies of images succeeded each other by turns on the throne, so that the battle
was fought, backwards and forwards, for a long time, until at length an agreement was come to
which has ever since continued in the Greek Church. By this agreement, it was settled that the
figures made by carving in stone or wood, or by casting metal into a mould, should be forbidden,
but that the rise of religious pictures (which were also called by the name of images) should be
allowed. Hence it is said that the Greeks may not worship anything of which one can take the tip
of the nose between his finger and his thumb. But in the Latin Church the carved or molten images
are still allowed; and among the poorer and less educated people there is a great deal of superstition
connected with them.
CHAPTER II: THE CHURCH IN ENGLAND AD 604–734.
While the light of the Gospel was darkened by the Mahometan conquests in some parts of the
world where it had once shone brightly, it was spreading widely among the nations which had got
possession of western Europe.
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In England, successors of St. Augustine converted a large part of the Anglo-Saxons by their
preaching, and much was also done by missionaries from the island of Iona, on the west of Scotland.
There, as we have seen (p139), an Irish abbot, named Columba, had settled with some companions
about the year 565, and from Iona their teaching had been carried all over the northern part of
Britain. These missionaries from Iona to England found a home in the island of Lindisfarne, on the
Northumbrian coast, which was given up to them by Oswald, king of Northumbria, and from them
got the name of Holy Island. Oswald himself had been converted while an exile in Scotland; and,
as he had learnt the language of the country there, he often helped the missionaries in their labours
by interpreting what they said into the language of his own subjects who listened to them. The
Scottish missionaries carried their labours even as far south as the river Thames; and their modest
and humble ways gained the respect and love of the people so much that, as we are told by the
Venerable Bede, wherever one of them appeared, he was joyfully received as the servant of God.
Even those who met them on the road used eagerly to ask their blessing, and, whenever one of them
came to any village, the inhabitants flocked to hear from him the message of the Gospel.
But these Scottish missionaries differed in some respects from the clergy who were connected
with St. Augustine; and after a time a great meeting was held at Whitby, in Yorkshire, to settle the
questions between them and the Roman Church. We must not suppose that these differences were
of any real importance; for they were only about such small matters as the reckoning of the day on
which Easter should he kept, and the way in which the hair of the clergy should be clipped or
shaven. But, although these were mere trifles, the two parties were each so set on their own ways
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that no agreement could be come to; and the end was, that the Scottish missionaries went back to
their own country, and did no more work for spreading the Gospel in England, although after a
while the Scottish clergy, and those of Ireland too, were persuaded to shave their hair and to reckon
their Easter in the same way as the other clergy of the West.
In those dark times some of the most learned and famous men were English monks. Among
them I shall mention only Bede, who is commonly called the Venerable, and to whose care we owe
almost all our knowledge of the early history of the Church in this land. Bede was born about the
year 673, near Jarrow, in Northumberland, and at the age of seven he entered the monastery of
Jarrow, where the rest of his life was spent. He tells us of himself that he made it his pleasure every
day “either to learn or to teach or to write something;” and, after having written many precious
books during his quiet life in his cell at Jarrow, he died on the eve of Ascension-day in the year
734, just as he had finished a translation of St. John’s Gospel.
CHAPTER III: ST. BONIFACE (AD 680–755)
Although the Church of Ireland was in a somewhat rough state at home, many of its clergy
undertook missionary work on the Continent; and by them and others much was done for the
conversion of various tribes in Germany and in the Netherlands. But the most famous missionary
of those times was an Englishman named Winfrid, who is styled the Apostle of Germany.
Winfrid was born near Crediton, in Devonshire, about the year 680. He became a monk at an
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early age, and perhaps it was then that he took the name of Boniface, by which he is best known.
He might probably have risen to a high place in the church of his own country if he had wished to
do so; but he was filled with a glowing desire to preach the Gospel to the heathen. He therefore
refused all the tempting offers which were made to him at home, crossed the sea, and began to
labour in Friesland and about the lower part of the Rhine. For three years he assisted another famous
English missionary, Willibrord, bishop of Utrecht, who wished to make Boniface his successor;
but Boniface thought that he was bound rather to labour in some country where his work was more
needed; so, leaving Willibrord, he went into Hessia, where he made and baptized many thousands
of converts. The pope, Gregory the Second, on hearing of this success, invited him to Rome,
consecrated him as a bishop, and sent him back with letters recommending him to the princes and
peoples of the countries in which his work was to lie (AD 723).
The government of the Franks was then in a very odd state. There were kings over them; but
these kings, instead of carrying on the government for themselves, and leading their nation in war,
were shut up in their palaces, except that once in the year they were brought out in a cart drawn by
bullocks to appear at the national assemblies.
These poor “do-nothings” (as the kings of the old French race are called) were without any
strength or spirit. From their way of life, they allowed their hair to grow without being shorn; and
the Greeks, who lived far away from them, and knew of them only by hearsay, believed, not only
that their hair was long, but that it grew down their backs like the bristles of a hog. And, while the
kings had sunk into this pitiable state, the real work of the kingly office was done, and the kingly
power was really enjoyed, by great officers who were called “mayors of the palace”.
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At the time which I am speaking of, the mayor of the palace was Charles, who was afterwards
known by the name of Martel, or “The Hammer.” Charles had done a great service to Christendom
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by defeating a vast army of Mahometans, who had forced their way from Spain into the heart of
France, and driving the remains of them back across the Pyrenees. It is said that they lost 375,000
men in the battle which they fought with Charles near Poitiers (AD 732); and, although this number
is no doubt beyond the truth, it is certain that the infidels were so much weakened that they never
ventured to attempt any more conquests in western Europe. But, although Charles had thus done
very great things for the Christian world, it would seem that he himself did not care much for
religion; and, although he gave Boniface a letter of protection, he did not help or encourage him
greatly in his missionary labours. But Boniface was resolved to carry on bravely what he believed
to be God’s work. He preached in Hessia and Thuringia, and made many thousands of converts.
He built churches and monasteries, and brought over from England large numbers of clergy to help
him in preaching and in the Christian training of his converts, for which purpose he also obtained
supplies of books from his own country. He founded bishoprics, and held councils of clergy and
laymen for the settlement of the Church’s affairs. Finding that the Hessians paid reverence to an
old oak-tree, which was sacred to one of their gods, he resolved to cut it down. The heathens stood
around, looking fiercely at him, cursing and threatening him, and expecting to see him and his
companions struck dead by the vengeance of their gods. But when he had only just begun to attack
the oak we are told that a great wind suddenly arose, and struck it so that it fell to the ground in
four pieces. The people, seeing this, took it for a sign from heaven, and consented to give up their
old idolatry; and Boniface turned the wood of the huge old oak to use by building a chapel with it.
In some places Boniface found a strange mixture of heathen superstitions with Christianity,
and he did all that he could to root them out. He had also much trouble with missionaries from
Ireland, whose notions of Christian doctrine and practice differed in some things from his; and
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perhaps he did not always treat them with so much of wisdom and gentleness as might have been
wished. But after all he was right in thinking that the sight of more than one kind of Christian
religion, different from each other and opposed to each other; must puzzle the heathen and hinder
their conversion; so that we can understand his jealousy of these Irish missionaries, even if we
cannot wholly approve of it.
In reward of his labours and success, Boniface was made an archbishop by Pope Gregory III
in 732; and, although at first he was not fixed in any one place, he soon brought the German Church
into such a state of order that it seemed to be time for choosing some city as the seat of its chief
bishop, just as the chief bishop of England was settled at Canterbury. Boniface himself wished to
fix himself at Cologne; but at that very time the bishop of Mentz got into trouble by killing a Saxon,
who, in a former war, had killed the bishop’s father. Although it had been quite a common thing
in those rough days for bishops to take a part in fighting, Boniface and his councils had made rules
forbidding such things, as unbecoming the ministers of peace; and the case of the bishop of Mentz,
coming just after those rules had been made, could not well be passed over. The bishop, therefore,
was obliged to give up his see; and Mentz was chosen to be the place where Boniface should be
fixed as archbishop and primate of Germany, having under him five bishops, and all the nations
which had received the Gospel through his preaching.
When Boniface had grown old, he felt himself again drawn to Frisia, where, as we have seen
(p 174), he had laboured in his early life; and at the age of seventy-five he left his archbishopric,
with all that invited him to spend his last days there in quiet and honour, that he might once more
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go forth as a missionary to the barbarous Frieslanders. Among them he preached with much success;
but on Whitsun Eve, 755, while he was expecting a great number of his converts to meet, that they
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might receive confirmation from him, he and his companions were attacked by an armed party of
heathens, and the whole of the missionaries, fifty-two in number, were martyred. But although
Boniface thus ended his active and useful life by martyrdom at the hands of those whom he wished
to bring into the way of salvation, his work was carried on by other missionaries, and the conversion
of the Frisians was completed within no long time. Boniface’s body was carried up the Rhine, and
was buried at Fulda, a monastery which he had founded amidst the loneliness of a vast forest, and
there the tomb of the “Apostle of the Germans” was visited with reverence for centuries.
CHAPTER IV: PIPIN AND CHARLES THE GREAT (AD 741–814)
PART I
Towards the end of St. Boniface’s life, a great change took place in the government of the
Franks. Pipin, who had succeeded his father, Charles Martel, as mayor of the palace, grew tired of
being called a sergeant white he was really the master; and the French sent to ask the pope, whose
name was Zacharias, whether the man who really had the kingly power ought not also to have the
title of king. Zacharias, who had been greatly obliged to the Franks for helping him against his
enemies the Lombards, answered them in the way that they seemed to wish and to expect; and
accordingly they chose Pipin as their king. And while, according to the custom in such cases, Pipin
was lifted up on a shield and displayed to the people, while he was anointed and crowned, the last
of the poor old race of “do-nothing” kings was forced to let his long hair be shorn until he looked
like a monk, and was then shut up in a monastery for the rest of his days.
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Pipin afterwards went into Italy for the help of the pope, and bestowed on the Roman Church
a large tract of country which he had taken from the Lombards. And this “donation” (as it was
called) or gift, was the first land which the popes possessed in such a way that they were counted
as the sovereigns of it.
Pipin died in 768, and was succeeded by his son Charles who is commonly called Charlemagne
(or Charles the Great). Under Charles the connexion between the Franks and the Popes became
still closer than before; and when Charles put down the Lombard kingdom in Italy (AD 774), the
popes came in for part of the spoil.
But the most remarkable effect of this connexion was at a later time, when Pope Leo III had
been attacked in a Roman street by some conspirators, who tried to blind him and to cut out his
tongue. But they were not able to do their work thoroughly, and Leo recovered the use both of his
tongue and of his eyes. He then went into Germany to ask Charles to help him against his enemies;
and on his return to Rome he was followed by Charles. There, on Christmas Day, AD 800, when
a vast congregation was assembled in the great church of St. Peter, the pope suddenly placed a
golden crown on the king’s head, while the people shouted, “Long life and victory to our emperor
Charles!” So now, after a long time, an emperor was set up again in the West; and, although these
new emperors were German, they all styled themselves Emperors of the Romans. The popes
afterwards pretended that they had a right to bestow the empire as they liked, and that Leo had
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taken it from the Greeks, and given it to the Germans. But this was quite untrue. Charles seems to
have made up his mind to be emperor, but he was very angry with the pope for giving him the
crown by surprise, instead of letting him take his own way about it; and, if he had been left to
himself, he would have taken care to manage the matter so that the pope should not appear to do
anything more than to crown him in form after he had been chosen by the Roman people.
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PART II
Charles was really a great man, although he had very serious faults, and did many blameable
things. He carried his conquests so far that the Greeks had a proverb, “Have the Frank for thy friend,
but not for thy neighbour,”— meaning that the Franks were likely to try to make their neighbours’
lands their own. He thought it his duty to spread the Christian faith by force, if it could not be done
in a gentler way; and thus, when he had conquered the Saxons in Germany, he made them be
baptized and pay tithes to the Church. But I need hardly say that people’s belief is not to be forced
in this way; and many of those who submitted to be baptized at the conqueror’s command had no
belief in the Gospel, and no understanding of it. There is a story told of some who came to be
baptized over and over again for the sake of the white dresses which were given to them at their
baptism; and when one of these had once got a dress which was coarser than usual, he declared
that such a sack was fitter for a swineherd than for a warrior, and that he would have nothing to do
with it or with the Christian religion. The Saxons gave Charles a great deal of trouble, for his war
with them lasted no less than thirty-three years; and at one time he was so much provoked by their
frequent revolts that he had the cruelty to put 4,500 Saxon prisoners to death.
But there are better things to be told of Charles. He took very great pains to restore learning,
which had long been in a state of decay. He invited learned men from Italy and from England to
settle in his kingdom; and of all these, the most famous was a Northumbrian named Alcuin. Alcuin
gave him wise and good advice as to the best way of treating the Saxons in order to bring them to
the faith; and when Charles was on his way to Rome, just before he was crowned as emperor,
Alcuin presented him with a large Latin Bible, written expressly for his use; for we must remember
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that printing was not invented until more than six hundred years later, so that all books in Charles’s
days were “manuscript” (or written by hand). Some people have believed that an ancient manuscript
Bible which is now to be seen in the great library at Paris is the very one which Alcuin gave to
Charles.
We are told that when Charles found himself at a loss for help in educating his people, he said
to Alcuin that he wished he might have twelve such learned clerks as Jerome and Augustine; and
that Alcuin answered, “The maker of heaven and earth has had only two such, and are you so
unreasonable as to wish for twelve?”
Alcuin was made master of the palace school, which moved about wherever the court was, and
in which the pupils were Charles’s own children and the sons of his chief nobles; and besides this,
care was taken for the education of the clergy and of the people in general. Charles himself tried
very hard to learn reading and writing when he was already in middle age; but although he became
able to read, and used to keep little tablets under his pillow, in order that he might practise writing
while lying awake in bed, he never was able to write easily. Many curious stories are told of the
way in which he overlooked the service in his chapel, where he desired that everything should be
done as well as possible. He would point with his finger or with his staff at any person whom he
wished to read in chapel, and when he wished any one to stop he coughed; and it was expected that
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at these signals each person would begin or stop at once, although it might be in the middle of a
sentence.
During this time the question of images, which I have already, mentioned (p 170), came up
again in the Greek Church. A council was held in 787 at Nicaea, where the first general council
had met in the time of Constantine, more than four centuries and a half before (PART I, Chap. xi.),
and in this second Nicene council images were approved of. In the West, the popes were also for
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them; but they were condemned in a council at Frankfort, and a book was written against them in
the name of Charles. It is supposed that this book was mostly the work of Alcuin, but that Charles,
besides allowing it to go forth with his name and authority, had really himself had a share in making
it.
Charles the Great died in the year 814. A short time before his death, he sent for his son Lewis,
and in the great church at Aix-la-Chapelle, which was Charles’s favourite place of abode, he took
from the altar a golden crown, and with his own hands placed it on the head of Lewis. By this he
meant to show that he did not believe the empire to depend on the pope’s will, but considered it to
be given to himself and his successors by God alone.
CHAPTER V: DECAY OF CHARLES THE GREAT’S EMPIRE (AD 814–887)
Lewis, the son of Charles the Great, was a prince who had very much of good in him, so that
he is commonly called the Pious. But he was of weak character, and his reign was full of troubles,
mostly caused by the ambition of his own sons, who were helped by a strong party among the
clergy, and even by Pope Gregory the Fourth. At one time he was obliged to undergo public penance,
and some years later he was deprived of his kingdom and empire, although these acts caused such
a shock to the feelings of men that he found friends who helped him to recover his power. And
after his death (AD 840) his children and grandchildren continued to quarrel among themselves as
long as any of them lived.
Besides these quarrels among their princes, the Franks were troubled at this time by enemies
of many kinds.
First of all I may mention the Northmen, who poured down by sea on the coasts of the more
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civilized nations. These were the same who in our English history are called Danes, with whom
the great Alfred had a long struggle, and who afterwards, under Canute, got possession of our
country for a time. They had light vessels— serpents, as they were called—which could sail up
rivers; and so they carried fire and sword up every river whose opening invited them, making their
way to places so far off the sea as Mentz, on the Rhine; Treves, on the Moselle; Paris, on the Seine;
and even Auxerre, on the Yonne. They often sacked the wealthy trading cities which lay open to
their attacks; they sailed on to Spain, plundered Lisbon, passed the Straits of Gibraltar, and laid
waste the coasts of Italy.
After a time they grew bolder, and would leave their vessels on the rivers, while they struck
across the country to plunder places which were known to be wealthy. They made fortified camps,
often on the islands of the great rivers, and did all the mischief they could within a large circle
around them. These Northmen were bitter enemies of Christianity, and many of them had lost their
homes because they or their fathers would not be converted at Charlemagne’s bidding; so that they
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had a special pleasure in turning their fury against churches and monasteries. Wherever they came,
the monks ran off and tried to save themselves, leaving their wealth as a prey to the strangers.
People were afraid to till the land, lest these enemies should destroy the fruits of their labours.
Famines became common; wolves were allowed to multiply and to prey without check; and such
were the distress and fear caused by the invaders, that a prayer for the deliverance “from the fury
of the Northmen” was added to the service-books of the Frankish Church.
Another set of enemies were the Mahometan Saracens, who got possession of the great islands
of the Mediterranean and laid waste its coasts. It is said that some of them sailed up the Tiber and
carried off the altar which covered the body of St. Peter. One party of Saracens settled on the banks
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of a river about halfway between Rome and Naples; others in the neighbourhood of Nice, and on
that part of the Alps which is now called the Great St. Bernard; and they robbed pilgrims and
merchants, whom they made to pay dearly for being let off with their lives.
Europe also suffered much from the Hungarians, a very rude, heathen people, who about the
year 900 poured into it from Asia. We are told that they hardly looked human, that they lived like
beasts, that they ate men’s flesh and drank their blood. They rode on small active horses, so that
the heavy-armed cavalry of the Franks could not overtake them; and if they ran away before their
enemies, they used to stop from time to time, and let fly their arrows backwards. From the Elbe to
the very south of Italy these barbarians filled Europe with bloodshed and with terror.
The Northmen at length made themselves so much feared in France, that King Charles III, who
was called the Simple, gave up to them, in 911, a part of his kingdom, which from them got the
name of Normandy. There they settled down to a very different sort of life from their old habits of
piracy and plunder, so that before long the Normans were ahead of all the other inhabitants of
France; and from Normandy, as I need hardly say, it was that William the Conqueror and his
warriors came to gain possession of England.
The princes of Charles the Great’s family, by their quarrels, broke up his empire altogether;
and nobody had anything like the power of an emperor until Otho I, who became king of Germany
in 936, and was crowned emperor at Rome in 962.
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CHAPTER VI: STATE OF THE PAPACY (AD 891–1046)
All this time the papacy was in a very sad condition. Popes were set up and put down continually,
and some of them were put to death by their enemies. The body of one pope named Formosus, after
it had been some years in the grave, was taken up by order of one of his successors (Stephen VI),was
dressed out in the full robes of office, and placed in the papal chair; and then the dead pope was
tried and condemned for some offence against the laws of the Church. It was declared that the
clergy whom he had ordained were not to be reckoned as clergy; his corpse was stripped of the
papal robes; the fingers which he had been accustomed to raise in blessing were cut off; and the
body, after having been dragged about the city, was thrown into the Tiber (AD 896).
Otho the Great, who has been mentioned as emperor, turned out a young pope, John XII, who
was charged with all sorts of bad conduct (AD 963); and that emperor’s grandson, Otho III, put in
two popes, one after another (AD 996, 999). The second of these popes was a very learned and
clever Frenchman, named Gerbert, who as pope took the name of Sylvester II. He had studied under
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the Arabs in Spain (for in some kinds of learning the Arabs were then far beyond the Christians);
and it was he who first taught Christians to use the Arabic figures (such as 1, 2, and 3) instead of
the Roman letters or figures (such as I, II, and III). He also made a famous clock; and on account
of his skill in such things people supposed him to be a sorcerer, and told strange stories about him.
Thus it is said that he made a brazen head, which answered “Yes” and “No” to questions. Gerbert
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asked his head where he should die, and supposed from the answer that it was to be in the city of
Jerusalem. But one day as he was at service in one of the Roman churches which is called “Holy
Cross in Jerusalem,” he was taken very ill; and then he understood that that church was the Jerusalem
in which he was to die. We need not believe such stories; but yet it is well to know about them,
because they show what people were disposed to believe in the time when the stories were made.
The troubles of the papacy continued, and at one time there were no fewer than three popes,
each of whom had one of the three chief churches of Rome, and gave himself out for the only true
pope. But this state of things was such a scandal that the emperor, Henry III, was invited from
Germany to put an end to it, and for this purpose he held a council at Sutri, not far from Rome, in
1046. Two of the popes were set aside, and the third, Gregory VI, who was the best of the three,
was drawn to confess that he had given money to get his office, because he wished to use the power
of the papacy to bring about some kind of reform. But on this he was told that he had been guilty
of simony—a sin which takes its name from Simon the sorcerer, in the Acts of the Apostles (ch
viii.), and which means the buying of spiritual things with money. This had never struck Gregory
before; but when told of it by the council he had no choice but to lay aside his papal robes, and the
emperor put one of his own German bishops into the papacy.
CHAPTER VII: MISSIONS OF THE NINTH AND TENTH CENTURIES
It will be pleasanter to tell you something about the missions of those times; for a great deal of
missionary work was then carried on.
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(1.) The Bulgarians, who had come from Asia in the end of the seventh century, and had settled
in the country which still takes its name from them, were converted by missionaries of the Greek
Church. It is said that, when some beginning of the work had been made, and the king himself had
been baptized by the patriarch of Constantinople (AD 861), the king asked the Greek emperor to
send him a painter to adorn the walls of his palace; and that a monk named Methodius was sent
accordingly, for in those times monks were the only persons who practised such arts as painting.
The king desired him to paint a hall in the palace with subjects of a terrible kind, by which he meant
that the pictures should be taken from the perils of hunting. But, instead of such subjects, Methodius
painted the last judgment, as being the most terrible of all things; and the king, on seeing the picture
of hell with its torments, and being told that such would be the future place of the heathen, was so
terrified that he gave up the idols which he had kept until then, and that many of his subjects were
also moved to seek admission into the Church.
Although the conversion of Bulgaria had been the work of Greek missionaries, the popes
afterwards sent some of their clergy into the country, and claimed it as belonging to them; and this
was one of the chief causes why the Greek and the Latin Churches separated from each other so
that they have never since been really reconciled.
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(2.) It is not certain whether the painter Methodius was the same as a monk of that name, who,
with his brother named Cyril, brought about the conversion of Moravia (AD 863). These missionaries
went about their work in a different way from what was common; for it had been usual for the
Greek clergy to use the Greek language, and for the Western clergy to use the Latin, in their church
service and in other things relating to religion; but instead of this, Cyril and Methodius learnt the
language of the country, and translated the church-services, with parts of the holy Scriptures, into
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it: so that all might be understood by the natives. In Moravia, too, there was a quarrel between the
Greek and the Latin clergy; but, although the popes usually insisted that the services of the Church
should be either in Latin or in Greek (because these were two of the languages which were written
over the Saviour’s cross), they were so much pleased with the success of Cyril and Methodius, that
they allowed the service of the Moravian Church to be still in the language of the country.
(3.) Soon after the conversion of the Moravians, the duke of Bohemia paid a visit to their king,
Swatopluk, who received him with great honour, but at dinner set him and his followers to sit on
the floor, as being heathens. Methodius, who was at the king’s table, spoke to the duke, and said
that he was sorry to see so great a prince obliged to feed as if he were a swineherd. “What should
I gain by becoming a Christian,” he replied, and when Methodius told him that the change would
raise him above all kings and princes, he and his thirty followers were baptized.
A story of the same kind is told as to the conversion of the Carinthians, which was brought
about in the end of the eighth century by a missionary named Ingo, who asked Christian slaves to
eat at his own table, while he caused food to be set outside the door for their heathen masters, as
if they had been dogs. This led the Carinthian nobles to ask questions; and in consequence of what
they heard they were baptized, and their example was followed by their people generally.
The second bishop of Prague, the chief city of Bohemia, Adalbert, is famous as having gone
on a mission to the heathens of Prussia, by whom he was martyred on the shore of the Frische Haff
in 997.
(4.) In the north of Germany, in Denmark, and in Sweden, Anskar, who had been a monk at
Corbey, on the Weser, laboured for thirty-nine years with earnest devotion and with great success
(AD 826–865). In addition to preaching the Gospel of salvation, he did much in such charitable
works as the building of hospitals and the redemption of captives; and he persuaded the chief men
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of the country north of the Elba to give up their trade in slaves, which had been a source of great
profit to them, but which Anskar taught them to regard as contrary to the Christian religion. Anskar
was made archbishop of Hamburg and Bremen, and is styled “The Apostle of the North.” But he
had to suffer many dangers and reverses in his endeavours to do good. At one time, when Hamburg
was burnt by the Northmen, he lost his church, his monastery, his library, and other property; but
he only said, with the patriarch Job, “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the
name of the Lord!” Then he set to work again, without being discouraged by what had befallen
him, and he even made a friend of the heathen king who had led the attack on Hamburg. Anskar
died in the year 865. It is told that when some of his friends were talking of miracles which he was
supposed to have done, he said, “If I were worthy in my Lord’s sight, I would ask of Him to grant
me one miracle—that He would make me a good man.”
(5.) The Russians were visited by missionaries from Greece, from Rome, and from Germany,
so that for a time they wavered between the different forms of the Christian religion which were
offered to them; but at length they decided for the Greek Church. When their great prince (who at
his baptism took the name of Basil) had been converted (AD 988), he ordered that the idol of the
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chief god who had been worshipped by the Russians should be dragged at a horse’s tail through
the streets of the capital, Kieff, and should be thrown into the river Dnieper. Many of the people
burst into tears at the sight; but when they were told that the prince wished them to be baptized,
they said that a change of religion must be good if their prince recommended it; and they were
baptized in great numbers. “Some,” we are told, “stood in the water up to their necks, others up to
their breasts, holding their young children in their arms; and the priests read the prayers from the
bank of the river, naming at once whole companies by the same name.”
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(6.) I might give an account of the spreading of the Gospel in Poland, Hungary, and other
countries; but let us keep ourselves to the north of Europe. Although Anskar had given up his whole
life to missionary work among the nations near the Baltic Sea, there was still much to be done, and
sometimes conversion was carried on in ways which to us seem very strange. As an instance of
this, I may give some account of a Norwegian king named Olave, the son of Tryggve.
Olave was at first a heathen, and had long been a famous sea-rover, when he was converted
and baptized in one of the Scilly islands (AD 994). He took up his new religion with a great desire
to spread it among his people, and he went about from one part of Norway to another, everywhere
destroying temples and idols, and requiring the people to he baptized whether they were willing or
not. At one place he found eighty heathens, who were supposed to be wizards. He first tried to
convert them in the morning when they were sober, and again in the evening when they were
enjoying themselves over their horns of ale; and as he could not persuade them, whether they were
sober or drunk, he burnt their temple over their heads. All the eighty perished except one, who
made his escape; and this man afterwards fell into the king’s hands, and was thrown into the sea.
At another time, Olave fell in with a young man named Endrid, who agreed to become a Christian
if any one whom the king might appoint should beat him in diving, in archery, and in sword-play.
Olave himself undertook the match, and got the better of Endrid in all the trials; and then Endrid
gave in, and allowed himself to be converted and baptized. These were strange ways of spreading
the Gospel; but they seem to have had their effect on the rough men of the North.
At last, Olave was attacked by some of his heathen neighbours, and was beaten in a great
sea-fight (AD 1000). It was generally believed that he had perished in the sea; but there is a story
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of a Norwegian pilgrim who, nearly fifty pears later, lost his way among the sands of Egypt, and
lighted on a lonely monastery, with an old man of his own country as its abbot. The abbot put many
questions to him, and asked him to carry home a girdle and a sword and to give them with a message
to a warrior who had fought bravely beside King Olave in his last battle; and on receiving them the
old warrior was assured that the Egyptian abbot could be no other than his royal master, who had
been so long supposed to be dead.
Somewhat later than Olave the son of Tryggve (AD 1015), Norway had another king Olave,
who was very zealous for the spreading of the Gospel among his people, and, like the elder Olave,
was willing to do so by force if he could not manage the matter otherwise. On his visiting a place
called Dalen, a bishop named Grimkil, who accompanied him, set forth the Christian doctrine, but
the heathens answered that their own god was better than the God of the Christians, because he
could be seen. The king spent the greater part of the night in prayer, and next morning at daybreak
the idol of the northern god Thor was brought forward by his worshippers. Olave pointed to the
rising sun, as being a witness to the glory of its Maker; and, while the heathens were gazing on its
brightness, a tall soldier, to whom the king had given his orders beforehand, lifted up his club and
dashed the idol to pieces. A swarm of loathsome creatures, which had lived within the idol’s huge
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body, and had fattened on the food and drink which were offered to it, rushed forth, as in the case
of the image of Serapis, hundreds of years before (Part I, Chap. XVI); whereupon the men of Dalen
were convinced of the falsehood of their old religion, and consented to be baptized. King Olave
was at length killed in battle against his heathen subjects (AD 1030), and his memory is regarded
as that of a saint.
(7.) From Norway the Gospel made its way to the Norwegian settlements in Iceland, and even
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in Greenland, where it long flourished, until, in the middle of the fifteenth century, ice gathered on
the shores so as to make it impossible to land on them. About the same time a great plague, which
was called the Black Death, carried off a large part of the settlers, and the rest were so few and so
weak that they were easily killed by the natives.
It seems to be certain that some of the Norwegians from Greenland discovered a part of the
American continent, although no traces of them remained there when the country was again
discovered by Europeans, hundreds of years later.
CHAPTER VIII: POPE GREGORY THE SEVENTH
PART I
In the times of which I have been lately speaking, the power of the popes had grown far beyond
what it was in the days of Gregory the Great.
I have told you Gregory was very much displeased because a patriarch of Constantinople had
styled himself “Universal Bishop” (p 159). But since that time the popes had taken to calling
themselves by this very title, and they meant a great deal more by it than the patriarchs of
Constantinople had meant; for people in the East are fond of big words, so that, when a patriarch
called himself “Universal Bishop,” he did not mean anything in particular, but merely to give
himself a title which would sound grand. And thus, although he claimed to be universal, he would
have allowed the bishops of Rome to be universal too. But when the popes called themselves
“Universal Bishops,” they meant that they were bishops of the whole Church, and that all other
bishops were under them.
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They had friends, too, who were ready to say anything to raise their power and greatness. Thus,
about the year 800, when the popes had begun to get some land of their own, through the gifts of
Pipin and Charlemagne (p 178), a story was got up that the first Christian emperor, Constantine,
when he built his city of Constantinople, and went to live in the East, made over Rome to the pope,
and gave him also all Italy, with other countries of the West, and the right of wearing a golden
crown. And this story of Constantine’s gift (or “Donation”, as it was called), although it was quite
false, was commonly believed in those days of ignorance.
About fifty years later another monstrous falsehood was put forth, which helped the popes
greatly. Somebody, who took the name of Isidore, a famous Spanish bishop who had been dead
more than two hundred years, made a collection of Church law and of popes’ letters; and he mixed
up with the true letters a quantity which he had himself forged, but which pretended to have been
written by bishops of Rome from the very time of the Apostles. And in these letters it was made
to appear that the pope had been appointed by our Lord Himself to be head of the whole Church,
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and to govern it as he liked; and that the popes had always used this power from the beginning.
This collection of laws is known by the name of the “False Decretals”; but nobody in those times
had any notion that they were false, and so they were believed by every one, and the pope got all
that they claimed for him.
But in course of time the popes would not he contented even with this. In former ages nobody
could be made pope without the emperor’s consent, and we have seen how Otho the Great, his
grandson, Otho III, and afterwards Henry III, had thought that they might call popes to account for
their conduct; now these emperors brought some popes before councils for trial, and turned them
out of their office when they misbehaved (p 184f). But just after Henry III, as we have read, had
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got rid of three popes at once, a great change began, which was meant to set the popes above the
emperors. The chief mover in this change was Hildebrand, who is said to have been the son of a
carpenter in a little Tuscan town and was born between the years 1010 and 1020.
PART II
Hildebrand became a monk of the strictest kind, and soon showed a wonderful power of swaying
the minds of other men. Thus, when a German named Bruno, bishop of Toul, had been chosen as
pope by Henry III, to whom he was related and as he was on his way to Rome that he might take
possession of his office, his thoughts were entirely changed by some talk with Hildebrand, whom
he happened to meet. Hildebrand told him that popes, instead of being appointed by emperors,
ought to be freely chosen by the Roman clergy and people; and thereupon Bruno, putting off his
fine robes, went on to Rome in company with Hildebrand, whose lessons he listened to all the way,
so that he took up the monk’s notions as to all matters which concerned the Church. On arriving
at Rome, he told the Romans that he did not consider himself to be pope on account of the emperor’s
favour, but that if they should think fit to choose him he was willing to be pope. On this he was
elected by them with great joy, and took the name of Leo IX (AD 1048). But, although Leo was
called pope, it was Hildebrand who really took the management of everything.
When Leo died (AD 1054), the Romans wished to put Hildebrand into his place; but he did not
yet feel himself ready to take the papacy, and instead of this he contrived to get one after another
of his party elected, until at length, after having really directed everything for no less than
five-and-twenty years, and under the names of five popes in succession, he allowed himself to be
chosen in 1073, and styled himself Gregory VII.
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The empire was then in a very sad state. Henry III had died in 1056, leaving a boy less than six
years old to succeed him; and this poor boy, who became Henry IV, was very badly used by those
who were about him. One day, as he was on an island in the river Rhine, Hanno, archbishop of
Cologne, gave him such an account of a beautiful new boat which had been built for the Archbishop,
that the young prince naturally wished to see it; and as soon as he was safe on board, Hanno carried
him off to Cologne, away from his mother, the empress Agnes. Thus the poor young Henry has in
the hands of people who meant no good by him; and, although he was naturally a bright clever,
amiable lad, they did what they could to spoil him, and to make him unfit for his office, by educating
him badly, and by throwing in his way temptations to which he was only too ready to yield. And
when they had done this, and he had made himself hated by many of his people on account of his
misbehaviour, the very persons who had done the most to cause his faults took advantage of them,
and tried to get rid of him as king of Germany, and emperor. In the meantime Hildebrand (or
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Gregory, as we must now call him) and his friends had been well pleased to look on the troubles
of Germany; for they hoped to turn the discontent of the Germans to their own purpose.
Gregory had higher notions as to the papacy than any one who had gone before him. He thought
that all power of every kind belonged to the pope; that kings had their authority from him; that all
kingdoms were held under him as the chief lord; that popes were as much greater than kings or
emperors as the sun is greater than the moon; that popes could make or unmake kings just as they
pleased; and although he had asked the emperor to confirm his election, as had been usual, he was
resolved that such a thing should never again be asked of an emperor by any pope in the time to
come.
PART III
One way in which Gregory tried to inc